2010: Meeting Rivers Health Target

Recent complaints of unethical conduct among medical personnel in public health institutions in Rivers State have created the aperture necessary to diagnose the state of that vital sector, with a view to prescribing urgent dialysis.

The concerns which range from questionable demands for gratification to irregularity of medical personnel, especially call doctors, at their duty posts, thus, leaving to their fate, patients with life-threatening afflictions in need of urgent attention, is everything but ethical.

Inundated with such reports, Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi had at various times made unscheduled visits to public health institutions, particularly, the Braithwaite Memorial Specialist Hospital (BMSH) at odd hours, to personally witness the patients’ pains.

It is understandable that the medical corps of the BMSH should be facing one of the most challenging moments since the institution’s founding because of the number of patients they are forced to attend to being the only functional specialist hospital in Port Harcourt city. Frankly, medical staff are stretched beyond human limits, while medical doctors are forced to work a little less than 24 Hours daily in order to meet the ever increasing health demands of the people, notwithstanding the fact that many of the cases the Specialist Hospital is today being pressured to address are indeed responsibilities of primary health institutions.

We are aware also that the Rivers state government recently recruited additional 200 medical doctors, 150 of who are meant to man each of the primary health centres being built across the state. Although few are already in use, others are at various stages of completion. When and if properly equipped as promised, and put to use, the frequent complaints of poor medical services by staff of the existing ones would abate and make every institution pay maximum attention to the health needs of its manageable number of patients.

This is why The Tide calls on contractors handling either the construction or equipment of the Primary Health Centres to face their assignments with the urgency they deserve. On the other hand, the health Ministry must place more premium on proper monitoring and supervision of existing health institutions to check the under-hand activities of never-do-wells in their ranks. 

We say so because, understandable as the patients’ upsurge on the BMSH and its attendant work load on the staff may be, it should not be an excuse for staffers to capitalise on the impatience of troubled patients, to demand questionable favours before providing treatment.

While The Tide considers these complaints most unbelievable, we none-the-less find their disturbing frequency worthy of an urgent probe, necessary to save the reputation of the health sector, into which huge investments have been made and still being made.

While this is on, we insist that the state government moves to sustain the positive attention which it has thus far given to the sector, by pushing a little but harder for the timely delivery and commissioning of the primary health centres being developed across the state.

Furthermore, government should consider as an urgent need, the building of the two Mother and Child hospitals mooted for parts of the city because we believe frankly, such a facility will reduce the weight now being suffered by the BMSH and other existing health institutions.

It does not require long-winding equivocation for a government to appreciate the importance of the health of citizens because in assessing the success or failure of any government, the people’s health is a vital yardstick. We so submit.