The recent appeal by a gospel singer and broadcast journalist in Akwa Ibom State for a specialized medical care due to her health condition has once again ignited the debate for the Ibom multispecialty hospital to be made to serve the purpose in which it was established.
Her public outcry about a debilitating health condition caught the attention of many people and it brought tears to lots of eyes. She was seeking financial support to enable her travel abroad for medical treatment.
Itoro Lawrence, a well known broadcast journalist and gospel singer took to her Facebook page to announce her health needs saying her already bad condition of health was made worse after an armed robbery attack which made her almost confined to a wheelchair.
In the post which went viral, she had suffered from a polio attack while she was young revealing that she had been coping with her condition until she was attacked by armed robbers.
“In 2016, armed robbers broke into my residence, robbed me of all my valuables and still beat me with a thick rod on my back bone, rendering my already bad and bent spine worse. I’m in excruciating pains with shocking sensations, numbness, and weakness from my waist down my legs,’’ she posted on her timeline.
According to her, “to avoid developing bowel and urinary incontinence and spending the rest of my life on a wheelchair, I was referred to a Herzliya medical centre in Israel for the surgery for ‘spinal decompression with instrumented fusion,’’ adding that this requires lots of money including a profoma invoice of N17 million for her treatment, flight tickets and hotel bills.
She fears that without the support from public spirited individuals, she might be able to afford the high cost of the medical treatment.
Ity Lawrence as she is fondly called is not alone. Hundreds of others out there are also in need of specialised medical care and millions of naira is required for medical tourism monthly by indigent patients almost on a monthly basis. Governor Udom Emmanuel confirmed this during a recent media interaction with journalists saying he gives approval running into several millions of naira monthly for people to travel abroad for medical treatment.
At the inception of the multi specialty hospital located in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, an imposing structure that greets visitors to the state on Ikot Ekpene road, it was thought it would be the answer to the frequent yearning for medical trip abroad as specialists in various fields were already working in the hospital.
Yemi Johnson, a cardiologist who was the first chief medical director of the hospital when the health facility began operations in 2014 said in interview then that the hospital was capable of performing treatments that had hitherto been done abroad.
‘In a few years time, we will be the best hospital in Africa. We do not need to have a new India but we want to surpass the standard of Indian hospitals. I guarantee that you will get the best medical care here compared to anywhere else in few years time,’’ Johnson said.
Findings show that the state government might have spent above N40.2 billion to set up the hospital yet it has been found that it was never completed as at the time it was inaugurated.
Dominic Ukpong, the commissioner for health confirmed that as at the time, the present administration headed by Udom Emmanuel as governor took over the hospital, many facilities had yet to be fixed.
‘So essentially, the specialist hospital was not completed. All the contractors that did the job were not paid and they abandoned the job. Some of them had done 80 percent and only received 50 percent of their money,’’ Ukpong said.
Ukpong also confirmed that the former management of the facility left behind a huge debt of N4 billion from hospital equipment worth N7.3 billion it acquired.
The hospital has had two managers since its inception in 2015. First it was managed by Cardiocare with Yemi Johnson as the Chief Medical Director and later by a Canadian based hospital management firm, Clinotech group.
By the time, Cardiocare services left, there were allegations of asset striping and pilfering of the hospital equipment, but could not be independently verified.
As a multi specialty hospital, it had doctors from many parts of the world including Venezuela, Italy, India and Colombia. The doctors were housed in a special accommodation provided by the state government and were chauffeur driven to the hospital at the expense of the state government.
Now the hospital is run by the ministry of health with a pediatrician as the chief medical director, a clear departure of the promise being a facility that will check medical tourism and a home to the best medical treatment centre on the African continent.
The question of the lips of many people is ‘how soon will the objective of establishing such a health facility in the state will be realised’ so that cases like of that Itoro Lawrence would be handled without much ado.
