The Chief Medical Director of  the University Teaching Hospital Calabar, Prof Thomas Agan has decried the attitude of some health care givers in the country towards their patients or the people they are supposed to protect.
Prof. Aga, who bared his mind on the issue while chatting with newsmen in his office in Calabar stressed that “the major problem we have in this country as far as rendering services to the patients is our attitude. The attitude of the health care givers to the patients and the attitude of the patients to their health leave so much to be desired. Over 90 per cent of deaths in our hospitals are due to our attitude”.
“Until we realize that we would be held accountable to every challenge we create, things will not go down well. I have always told people that if you don’t know what to do leave out or do no harm. That means it is better you do nothing than to do something that creates harm,” he stressed.
“Generally speaking, we are well trained. What is deficient is our attitude to patient care. I see no reason why a doctor for instance, whether he is on call or not, when he gets home, he switches off his/her phone. You have no business switching off your phone because the call you may receive keeps someone alive or keeps you alive. It is rather unfortunate that we find ourselves in this situation. Yet, majority of us are either Christians or Muslims,” he noted.
According to the CMD “so many of us are pastors, deacons, knights and  all kinds of religious titles. But how do we respond to the challenges of others? Put yourself in the shoes of the patients and ask yourself if I were in the shoes of these patients or if she were my wife, or my child or my relation, how would I manage this patient. The answer you give to that question, use it in managing others. The book of James 2:26 says  just as the body without the soul is dead so is faith without works dead.” On the way forward, Professor Agan said, “for us here at University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, UCTH, our strategic development plan for the next five years is being developed.
We want to see a hospital where facilities are working near 100%. We want to see a hospital where the infrastructural decay is properly devalued. We what to see a hospital where all post-graduate departments are fully accredited so that we can reduce the cost of training our post graduate doctors in other sectors,” he quipped.

Friday Nwagbara, Calabar