Posted on: Mon 29-04-2024

The House Committee on Health Institutions has charged the management of University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, UNTH Ituku Ozalla, Enugu to build a good community relationship to help deliver quality healthcare to the people.

They opined that the  good relationship would increase the internally generated revenue, IGR of the institution.

The committee Chairman, Hon. Amos Gwamna Magaji who made this call at the weekend during an oversight visit to the hospital urged the unit head, head of department and the chief medical director to raise the standard and be professional in dealing with workers and patients.

“I am always emphasizing on the quality of workers here, make it count, let them be happy to come to work, let them run from their leaves to come to work because they’re missing the relationship built here, let it not be the one they will claim to be sick a week to the end of their leave. Make it a place where we find relationships, love, and support.

“Non should be a Pharaoh in his department. The quality of work any department will execute depends solely on how you treat your staff. Starting from unit head, head of department and CMD, let’s turn here to be a family where we know each other, love, and support each other and consider every person as a human being. Do not turn down on your workers because if you do that they will turn down on patients.

“Let there be no Spirit in this hospital where doctors are quarrelling with nurses and sometimes in front of patients. Let’s raise the bar, and the standard and make it professional. Don’t combine personal issues with official issues.

“I want us to concentrate more on internal customer relationships with one another to make external customers work effectively. Go back to your department and make a change, make it a dutiful place where people are glad to work. People are already stressed in Nigeria, do not add to it.

“Let our attitude change, let’s love one another and treat people as human beings, we don’t value life and human beings, let a new UNTH emerge from her ashes of defeat,” he admonished.

Earlier in open remarks, the CMD Obinna Onodugo disclosed that the teaching hospital has improved in some departments and would want more intervention from the federal government.

Onodugo disclosed that the hospital management is working tirelessly to convert the old site of UNTH into an emergency services place and good beautiful care resort to help those in the town have access to good health care delivery.

He appealed to the National Assembly to help the hospital tackle the insecurity by fencing the facility, providing housing for staff, power and MR machines and other equipment to help them deliver quality healthcare services to the public.

“I will list some of our challenges but before then I would like to tell you what we have achieved. Running the hospital here is not easy because the hospital is situated in the outskirts but with this able team we managed to do a few things, which is a largely uninterrupted flow of work, beautiful industrial harmony, a fostering attitude which is quarterly reviewed, training and retraining of workers to take care of patients and we are having a better output.

“We are being affected with Japa syndrome. We are trying to reduce the equipment gap for the moment. We didn’t have a CT scan before but now it is functional and so many things. The lab output has improved. We are trying to ensure we don’t have much of a gap anymore.

“We’re also trying to improve on infrastructure, a lot of departments have been stepped up. The Ecology department of this hospital is one of the best in the country, and theater, radiology, pharmacy and many others are receiving attention. We have completed a new administrative building and will soon park in the building. We have done 90% automation of the hospital and also overcome the perennial shortage of water in the hospital by creating a water works in a dam.

“We have challenges and one of the challenges is the hospital’s distance and in the middle of nowhere, security is our major problem. You have read how gunmen abducted our staff and security officers. If it happens again, you might see staff absconding from work and the issue is that this place is surrounded with bushes and not fenced. Power is a major challenge here, we also have the problem of housing as our staff have to travel far to come to work.

“We are still seeking for a grant to build quarters for our staff to make this place a community where there will be live 24/7 to be able to deliver uninterrupted health service to people. We still need more equipment like MR machines and other equipment to help the hospital deliver effective health care services to the people.

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