Leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses – Mitt Romney

 

This piece is not a response to the countless statements uttered by a group of individuals who hold office but not power at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. It is a testament based on facts, demanding dialogue not an exchange of derogatory words between employer and employee.

 

The Lagos University Teaching hospital remains a health institution incomparable to any in the country, with a rich history of over 40 years, diverse professionals, and specialties; it is hardly comparable with any hospital even in the entire West African region. During the course of this ‘rich’ history we have recorded giant strides in innovation and patient care, trained and employed excellent physicians such as the late Dr. Adadevoh, Prof. Omilabu and many others too numerous to count, and like all great things we have arrived at curves on different occasions in our history where we had to grow, caution ourselves and demand the standards we profess.

 

While the Lagos University Teaching hospital boasts of a remarkable staff, poor management has continued to cripple our best efforts. Although this problem pervades in most public institutions within the country; in a hospital, it costs lives. And we have lost too many.

 

The management of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital has listed amongst several things her achievements;

 

An independent power project guaranteeing round the clock power supply. A curious person has to only spend a day at the hospital to debunk this blatant lie. Patients on the ward can testify to the erratic power and near absent water supply. The media is rife with testimonies of those who have lost loved ones due to the preventable darkness. We can lay the erratic power supply as a national problem, but it is inhumane to deny its presence and lure many into believing it is non-existent.

LUTH treats over 100 cancer patients in a day: While the staff capacity is more than capable of achieving this. Poor maintenance of facilities, epileptic power supply, and an unrealistic bureaucracy has made this unachievable. So while the management stays aloof and publishes expensive editorials with ‘Tax Payers money’, the same residents who are accused are the frontline physicians who attend to these patients and many times use their financial resources to support patients in need of basic materials like gloves, sample bottles, drugs and even transportation. The real question the Ministry should ask is, for how many months has this linear accelerator radiotherapy machine worked in the last 12 months? Only 3.

The LUTH IVF center has recorded suboptimal successes despite the funds invested in it. Once again, the barrier to the success of this unit is not a lack of personnel but a moribund and unresponsive management, leaving patients with a slow and cumbersome registration process, coupled with the poor maintenance of facilities. This same problem is found in the defunct immunohistochemistry laboratory.

Surgical training skills which allegedly are being sponsored by private organizations like Storzz and Johnson and Johnson companies have only allowed residents to register after they have paid 5 digit fees (N40000), despite the fact that this training will promote better patient management within the hospital. In spite of the ‘pay as you go’ method of training. Most residents do not begrudge this, but it is not an achievement. Another unnecessary blatant lie.

The statements published by the management of Lagos University Teaching Hospital are numerous, all bogus and misleading. They are a mixture of half-truths, outright lies, and innuendo. We invite investigative journalists to visit or speak with patients and obtain a true picture of the state of affairs at the hospital. This is important as we must eradicate lies from the Nigerian public life especially from the hallowed halls of our health institutions.

 

The challenge of the staff in the hospital, medical and non-medical alike are primarily 2.

 

1) How do we communicate a dire problem of ‘incompetent management’ costing lives by the hour to the Nigerian government?

 

2) How do we follow the leadership of a management, deep in denial and consistently refuses every overture of dialogue?

 

When the nurses, doctors, pharmacists, administrative staff in a hospital with one voice demand action on a matter, reason demands that action is taken. After all, can 2 walk together except they agree?

 

The use of taxpayers’ money running into hundreds of thousands to publicly defame staff who work right under their noses is difficult to understand and totally unacceptable.

 

The illegal suspension of a member of staff without recourse to due process has finally been settled by the courts, with the ruling in favor of Dr. Adeyelu. It is sad that a simple issue which could have been managed by a responsible leadership had to be settled in the court of law. However, once again Justice was affirmed.

 

The continuous defamation of the standing president of the Association of Resident Doctors (LUTH Chapter) has also been a concern. The depth to which the leadership of the hospital in the person of the CMD and CMAC has descended is unprecedented. Little wonder only a backdoor ‘selection’ not election could have afforded their entrance into office.

 

Finally, in the words of Wole Soyinka, ‘the man dies in all those that keep silent’. We refuse to be silent in the face of tyranny and demand accountability.

 

Signed’

 

Association of Resident Doctors (LUTH Chapter)