- Demand more land allocation
From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Abuja has lamented the effect of space constraints in the medical services being offered by the hospital to Nigerians, hence they demanded that FCT Administration allocate land for the expansion of the hospital and its services.
The hospital complained that the space constraints has discouraged it from expansion of services, local and international collaborations, and increase in it manpower needs.
Its Chief Medical Director (CMD), Prof Saad Ahmed, made the appeal during a visit to the hospital premises, by the Senate Committee on Health, led by its Chairman, Senator Banigo Ipalibo.
Prof. Ahmed recall that in 2020, the outpatient client of the hospital per month was between 5, 000 to 6,000. But currently the hospital is battling with 20, 000 per month. “The increase in outpatient clients of the hospital had stretched the work and made the work more stressful. So, there’s need for more space to be allocated to the hospital to build more wards.
“For instance, the hospital has just one chemotherapy suite for the treatment of cancer. This is insufficient to carter for the needs of cancer patients. There was need to have something like a bunker where linear accelerators for treatment of cancer cases can be mounted, but there is no space currently to put such.”
He begged the lawmakers for upward review of the budget allocation for the medical centre, saying that more equipment was still needed to make the hospital exercise its functions to the fullest capacity.
“It may interest you to know that we have equipments to do different surgeries in this health facility. The challenge we have is the space constraints. We need to expand in order to give more services to health-seeking Nigerians.
“With regards to manpower issue, it is a global challenge but the Minister of Health, Prof. Ali Pate, Members of the National Assembly, and also the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation are trying to see how this can be made seamless so that even if others go, we would be able to replace in no time.
“The government is also focusing on training institutions to see how they can increase their capacity based on the Specialists that we have on ground and the equipment that can accommodate that. Residency Training is going on well here. it is also a way of increasing the manpower.
“Residency training is essentially a kind of training where you train doctors to become Consultants or Specialists, and once you have this, you will be able to put them in different places so that they can give quality services”, the CMD said.
The Committee Chairman, Ipalibo, appreciated the efforts of the hospital in providing health care services for the people.
She agreed with the CMD that expansion in space and otherwise is needed to bring the maximum potential out of the hospital.
She, thus requested for the audit report of the hospital between 2021-2023, which the CMD promised to make available to them.