Activities at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH, Idi-Araba, Lagos, have been disrupted for two days due to power outage. Visits to the hospital on Tuesday and Wednesday show that many health personnel were unable to carry out their duties including medical tests.
There was slight improvement on Wednesday as the hospital management was forced to use its backup generating set to power some essential sections.
Some doctors and health workers who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that activities in the hospital are slow due to the outage.
An out-patient, Geraldine Popoola, said at the records department that one of the attending officers with poor sight was forced to use torchlight to perform her duty.
“The records department is very dark and it is really frustrating for the woman to take my details.
“Since the room was dark, it took her longer time than usual to manage to write my details in such condition,’’ she said.
Also, Kuburat Taiwo, relative of a patient on admission, said that an operation that ought to have been carried out on her sister early in the morning was suspended.
“The medical team handling her case told us that they could not go on with the operation because there is no blood at the blood bank as a result of the power outage. “They claimed that the blood kept in the bank had been evacuated and taken to a safe place where there is stable electricity,” she said.
A senior official at the hospital, who pleaded anonymity, said that power outage had been the norm in the hospital for a while.
The official said that this had on many occasions stalled essential services. According to the official, many surgeries scheduled to be performed on some patients on critical conditions were cancelled as a result of the power outage.
“We have been experiencing this for some time now. And, anytime there is a power outage, it makes the performance of our duties difficult or impossible.
“We have the issue of the shortage of blood in the hospital because blood needs to be preserved with electricity,” the official said.
“As am talking to you now, there is no blood in the blood bank, because there is no electricity to preserve the blood,” the source added.
When contacted, the Chief Medical Director of the Hospital, Akin Osibogun, said, “To be realistic, power in Nigeria is epileptic. We have national challenges when it comes to power supply.”
Mr. Osibogun said that while the hospital has energy generating sets, they cannot work for 24 hours.
“We must leave them to rest for some time, otherwise, they will breakdown.
“If you ask patients to pay for diesel to power the generators then, it would raise the cost of services and we may able to run the generators for 24 hours.
“But, if we increase the cost, it would affect some people who cannot afford the increased cost of services,” he said.
Mr. Osibogun said that the hospital’s management is trying its best to serve the patients.
“People should be realistic and stop discouraging our efforts with their complaints.
“For 4,000 megawatts to serve a country of 150 million people, that’s a very great challenge and we are doing our best to work within that context,” the doctor said.
-culled from premium times
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