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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives has charged teaching hospitals and other tertiary health institutions in the country to give adequate attention to research.
The chairman, House Committee on Health Institutions, Patrick Umoh, gave the charge, on Tuesday, at budget defence session with Federal University Teaching Hospitals and Federal Medical Centers ( FMCs).
Umoh expressed displeasure that Chief Medical Directors ( CMDs) of tertiary health institutions allocate very paltry sum to research. He stated that tertiary health institutions have abandoned their core mandate of research and assumed the functions of general hospitals.
The lawmaker said “teaching hospitals are supposed to be centres of research. You have never raised the issue of lack of funding for research, but you talk more about infrastructure. That makes you part of the problem.
“The COVID-19 pandemic caught us all unprepared. Let me mock you a little by saying that traditional medicine practitioners appeared to be doing better. You are not doing research. I have gone on several oversight visits, but no hospital has taken me to a facility and said, ‘this is our research centre.”
The Committee of CMDs, which spoke through its secretary, Professor Pokop Wushipba Bupwatda, admitted that only one percent of teaching hospitals budget is allocated to research. Nevertheless, he noted that budget line is often removed during the budgeting process.
Bupwatda, who is also the CMD of the University of Jos Teaching Hospital, stressed the need for adequate funding of the health sector. According to him many federal hospitals are understaffed, enhance the need for recruitment of qualified personnel.
Furthermore, the CMD identified poor releases of appropriated funds, as well as power supply as major challenges confronting federal tertiary health institutions.
He explained that the hospitals spend huge sums on electricity bills so as to ensure constant power to operate critical equipments crucial to the care of patients.
