The CMD says the viral news of shutdown of wards in LUTH is inaccurate, boasting that the hospital ranks among the best health facilities in Africa with 24-hour power supply.
The Chief Medical Director of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, Wasiu Adeyemo, has denied the viral news that the hospital is in critical crisis over the reported shutdown of some wards owing to brain drain.
Reports during the week quoted the Chairman of the Health Committee of the House of Representatives, Amos Magaji, claiming five wards had been shut at the tertiary health facility with about 150 wards affected.
The lawmaker said this during a media chat shortly after an oversight visit to the hospital earlier in the week.
Mr Mogaji said the alarming rate of migration of health workers was becoming a national embarrassment to the country.
But in an exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Adeyemo, a professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, said the situation was taken out of context.
Though Mr Adeyemo confirmed the impacts of brain drain on the operations of the facility, he said the hospital has a total of 45 wards and about 1,000 beds.
He noted that some of the reported closed wards had also been merged with the existing wards “owing largely to ongoing renovations and not strictly for ‘japa’ reasons.”
Japa, a Yoruba coinage, which literally means to run away, is popularly used in Nigeria to refer to relocation of Nigerians in search of greener pastures abroad, especially the US, Canada and some European countries, particularly the UK.
Mr Adeyemo said regardless of the five wards, the hospital still possesses the best health facilities and delivers quality health services with about 40 functioning wards and over 800-bed capacity.
“We can’t underestimate or underrate the reality. However, we must not blow it out of proportion so we don’t cause panic among the people. Virtually all wards are general wards and we can admit to any of them, except paediatrics,” the CMD explained.
Infrastructural upgrade in LUTH
According to the CMD, the federal government recently approved money for infrastructural renewal and renovation of the wards. The retrofitting, according to him, requires moving and merging wards with others.
“After we renovated, moving back became a problem. So, we didn’t shut down. To go back, we realised we didn’t have enough nurses to handle them,” he said.
“During an engagement with the House Committee, we highlighted our challenges and their presentation of the issue was well understood. I just want to put perspectives into this matter.”
Mr Adeyemo boasted about the facilities in LUTH, saying they ranks among the best and most equipped health institutions in Africa.
He said LUTH has the largest cancer centre, a 40-bed capacity ultra-modern neonatal intensive care unit and labour ward complex as well as a 30-bed intensive care unit.
He added that the facility has a 60-bed, four-floor Alima Atta Oncology ward built and equipped for LUTH by a philanthropist, Iyabo Atta, in memory of her daughter, Alima, who died of cancer.
The chief medical director also boasted that there is hardly any public infrastructure of LUTH size in Nigeria that enjoys 24-hour uninterrupted power supply as the hospital has been enjoying since 2017.
He said: “We have an independent power supply that relies only on gas. Our downtime in a month is less than one per cent. It costs us about N100 million monthly but it is the best you can get anywhere in the country and beyond. So we should stop pulling our institutions down.”
He advised the Nigerian media to stop feasting only on negative reports but to reflect all sides and give context to reports.
Other reasons for overstretched workforce
According to Mr Adeyemo, other factors may have accounted for the overstretching of the personnel beyond the brain drain.
He said a Nigerian philanthropist recently donated about N2 billion worth Oncology Centre to the hospital and that due to the elongated processes of recruitment and the request by the donor to urgently put the facility into use, the hospital had to transfer existing personnel to the facility.
“Recruitment in public institutions requires a lot of processes and that is why the hospital has never been found wanting for irregular employment. But because the donor of this massive investment wanted us to put it into use immediately, we had to find a middle ground by transferring some of the existing workers there,” he said.
He however noted that a recruitment process is ongoing and as soon as the process is completed, all the hospital’s wards will be put to use.
“We explained everything to the house committee on health and they assured us to present it at the national assembly,” he said.
Brain Drain
Mr Adeyemo said the challenge posed by brain drain otherwise known as “japa syndrome” is not only limited to his hospital but every sector of Nigeria’s economy.
“The brain drain is affecting virtually all hospitals in Nigeria and LUTH as a facility is doing everything to manage the situation,” he said.
He said Nigerian healthcare workers leave the country for both push and pull factors, saying unlike in the past when opportunities were only found in Saudi Arabia and a few other places, “opportunities now abound everywhere- from Europe to America, UK to the Arabian countries.”
“So the world is now a global village and the opportunities are everywhere. If you advertise that you want to employ resident doctors, only people who apply will be reviewed, but if they don’t apply, they can’t be forced. People are more attracted to openings abroad because they want to earn in foreign currencies,” he said.
As of July, the President of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), Emeka Orji revealed that the association is left with only a few over 9,000 medical doctors, due to the brain drain crisis in the healthcare system.
According to the Nigerian Society of Anaesthetists, no fewer than 400 consultant anaesthetists left Nigeria for greener pastures in the last two years.
Also, more than 7,000 pharmacists emigrated from Nigeria in the last two years, due to the lack of incentives to practice locally, according to the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN).
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