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Malaria cases distracting us from our primary duties — UBTH

malaria

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Adekunle Peter, Benin

The Chief Medical Director of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Prof Darlington Obaseki, on Monday said the influx of patients with minor ailments had distracted the hospital from performing its primary duties.

He said this during a briefing held to announce the activities lined up for the inaugural Founder’s Day celebration, planned in conjunction with the 46th anniversary of the hospital.

He said, “We have our challenges, but we know what we are supposed to be doing. A specialist health centre, such as ours is supposed to be doing things like hip replacement surgery, open heart surgery, kidney transplant, stem cell transplant, cancer treatment, etc.

“We are being distracted from our primary duties. Ideally, primary health issues should go to primary health care centres. Nowadays, what we do is just treating minor ailments like malaria.

“Our doctors here are specialist surgeons, gynaecologists, oncologists, and so on. They are not supposed to be treating things like malaria, which, ordinarily, should have been handled at primary health facilities.”

The CMD expressed appreciation to the Edo State Government’s recent decision to upgrade all primary health centres in the State and make them functional, so that they could relieve UBTH of its burden.  “That will take the pressure away from us and enable us to help our people more,” he added.

Prof Obaseki also used the occasion to appeal to well-meaning Nigerians to assist UBTH to give its best by contributing to the endowment fund planned to raise money for the hospital.

Obaseki, who noted that public health ventures were not profit-oriented, disclosed that the non availability of interventional fund hass crippled the Stem Cell Centre at the hospital.

“We have done so much. We have produced manpower for this country. We are one of the pillars of the health sector in Nigeria, with so many sectors depending on us to sustain their workforce.

“We are using this opportunity to sensitise the public to contribute to the development of the hospital through our Endowment Fund. We need to expand the range of our investigational and interventional services to modern standards to the extent that it will reverse the current trend of outward medical tourism,” he said.

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