30th April, 2015
Jamiu Yisa
Ifako-Ijaiye General Hospital in Ifako, Lagos, southwest Nigeria, is in a very terrible shape and needs urgent attention by the appropriate authorities.
Investigations have revealed that some critical facilities in the hospital have collapsed and hapless patients and doctors are crying out for the hospital to be bailed out urgently.
Investigation by P.M.NEWS correspondent revealed that things are so bad that the hospital’s faulty N16 millon generator has made it difficult for doctors to carry out their operations successfully as some of them resort to the use of rechargeable lamps during emergencies in the middle of the night whenever there is power failure.
This has led to several deaths and equally affected water supply in the hospital, said hospital sources.
Due to lack of water, public conveniences such as toilets and other sensitive areas are in a messy state. The hospital buys water from itinerant cart pushers when they cannot cope.
Doctors on duty, it was gathered, usually find it difficult to wash their hands after attending to patients due to scarcity of water.
There is so much heat in the three-storey building in the hospital that pregnant women, medical staff and other patients use fans to manually fan themselves anytime the heat becomes unbearable.
During P.M.NEWS correspondent’s visit to the hospital, it was discovered that the faulty N16m giant generator can only work for between one and two hours whenever there was power outage.
The inverter that the hospital relies on as an alternative source of power supply only covers the maternity ward and the theatre room and cannot work more than two hours, leaving other areas in total darkness at night.
It was further gathered that patients are transferred to Island Maternity on Lagos Island in the middle of the night for proper attention whenever complication arises. This has led to several deaths as confirmed by our correspondent from reliable sources within the hospital.
One of the hospital sources who did not want to be mentioned, said: “A lot of deaths have been recorded as a result of this. The latest was the woman who died last week after giving birth. She died while the doctors were trying to rush her to another hospital for proper medical attention. There have been so many deaths but I don’t have the numbers. The hospital sure has the records.
“The generator has been faulty for more than three months now and nothing meaningful has been done about it. Whenever there is power failure, everything goes down because we rely slolely on electricity by Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN. According to the management, the faulty generator was said to have been bought for N16m.
“It used to work for about one to two hours before but it has packed up now. You can imagine the kind of heat that people experience here. I pity those patients especially the pregnant women.
“Since Ayinke House (Ikeja General Hospital Maternity Ward) has been closed down, some of the patients were transferred here and you can imagine what they go through everyday because of the faulty generator. The doctors even find it difficult to wasch their hands after working on patients not to talk of water to flush the toilets and the rest. That is how bad it is.”
The Medical Director of the hospital, Dr (Mrs.) Sodehinde N.I., was not available for comments when our correspondent visited the hospital and no one was ready to divulge her mobile phone numbers.