Local news::UITH doctors use lamps, torchlights to perform operations

– UITH doctors say power outage has affected their work at the hospital

– They say they are forced to reschedule appointments due to lackof power and sometimes, they use torchlight

– The teaching hospital says the power problem is a national one Dr. Oyinlola Oluwagbemiga who is the immediate past president of the Association of Resident Doctors, University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) branch has revealed that due to power failures doctors have been forced to carry out operations using lamps and touch lights.The Punch reports that Dr.

Ade Faponle ho who is the current president of the association also revealed that power outage has also forced them to reschedule operations rather than risk the lives of patients.
The duo spoke in Ilorin, the Kwara state capital, on the sidelines of the ongoing doctors’ nationwide strike.

Oluwagbemiga said:“There are certain procedures we embark upon, you have to complete them using your torchlight or phone lights. Imagine that you are in an emergency where you have to resuscitate a patient and you resort to that.

It is that bad. It even stretches to sanitation.“We have reached the point where you are having a major procedure and all you can hear is ‘please we can only supply light for the next two hours, make sure you complete your operation.

’ And there are operations that last for four or more hours. So if you have such, you have to reschedule because you have been told ab-initio that you are on your own should you embark on such.

”Mr. Ganiyu Yusuf who is the director of administration at UITH said the power failure was a national problem and not peculiar to the hospital aloneand that the institution spent about N16m monthly on diesel and N3m monthly on electricity bill to the Ibadan Distribution Electricity Company.

“As management, we are not going tojoin issues with the resident doctors.But we are going to state the facts.
It is not news that electricity generation in the country is bad.

The problem affects everybody, not only the hospital. We spend N16m monthly to buy diesel.

We have a 500KV generator and another 350kv generator, as well as many other smaller generators to power each unit and department.

“The N16m that we pay is different from the N3m that we pay to IBEDC every month. Imagine what N19m could have done, if we had steady power supply in the country.“We have done what we could do as a management with the resources available.

We have separate generators for many sections. If you turn on the light in the hospital because of the operations the doctors will do, we keep it running until 4pm. Even when the power is on, how many of the doctors are ready to perform surgeries?

If we know that in our area power will come at a certain time, you programme your activities.“We lost three people in an attempt to stabilise the power supply. One of them was electrocuted and another dropped in water.

What we are trying to do is to link up with the university and take power from Ganmo. Imaginethe huge cost.”Meanwhile, there was pandemonium at UBTH when members of the Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria , engaged management staff of the hospital in a free for all.The laboratory scientists who are currently on strike were at the hospital to picket adhoc medical laboratory scientists reportedly recruited from a private medical laboratory outfit by the hospital management, a development described by the association as“unacceptable.”