National Orthopaedic Hospital faces comatose, as Japa hits hard

National Orthopaedic Hospital faces comatose conditions as Japa hits hard

Outpatients lament struggling to access medical care

By Our Correspondent

The National Orthopaedic Hospital Igbobi Lagos (NOHIL) is barely breathing and is in dire need of resuscitating, as it suffers the consequences of the mass exodus of medical personnel from Nigeria in search of better working conditions and standards of living.

It is no news that in recent years, Nigeria’s health sector has suffered, and continues to suffer, from a huge dearth of qualified manpower who are fleeing abroad for more and better conditions of service, in a trend referred to as “Japa syndrome” in local Nigerian locution.

Findings show that NOHIL is one of those medical set ups particularly hit by Japan syndrome, as its operations are barely getting by due to acute shortage of personnel across many of the departments and units.

At the premier orthopaedic institution, which serves as a centre of the World Health Organization (WHO), patients who do not make the cut for the day’s booking to be registered as fresh patients or for such procedures as X-ray or physiotherapy or be attended to by doctors routinely resort to passing nights within complex at the mercy of the elements.

It was gathered that Patients and their relatives or other caregivers settled for such grueling nights in the open as an effective strategy for minimizing logistical expenditures and other costs of booking the names of patients early enough for their various appointments.

The worst hit department, according to further investigations, happens to be the Radiology Unit, which, as early as 7:00 AM, attains its daily count of 20 patients booking for X-rays, as any or all other persons reporting after that figure are firmly ordered to try out another day and subsequently dismissed.

It was observed, however, that staff of the hospital also indiscriminately smuggle in the names of persons preferred based on familial or pecuniary relationships for X-ray services at the Radiology Unit.

There is also an X-ray centre operated besides that of the hospital’s by a private sector service provider, Crestview Radiology Limited, which was recently overwhelmed by huge demand when NOHIL’s X-ray machine broke down.

Notably, patients can only be attended to at the Crestview X-ray Center strictly based on request forms and referrals endorsed by NOHIL doctors.

It was gathered that, in order to ensure that each of their patients gets adequate care, physiotherapists at the Physiotherapy Unit have resorted to keeping the maximum number of patients they attend to daily below 10.

Speaking anonymously, a female outpatient, who is a resident of Ijoko in neighbouring Ogun State, lamented that she had suffered several misses while seeking to have her initial X-ray session. She admitted that she was only able to have that initial x-ray after having risen and reported to the Radiology Unit at 4:30 AM, after she joined many others who did the same in passing the night along the hospital’s corridors.

She disclosed that she had adopted the same strategy of sleeping over at the hospital in order to successfully keep up with the appointments for other X-rays and her physiotherapy sessions.

Stressing that bills for the various hospital services were high and already draining her purse, she noted that her finances, in the prevailing harsh economic conditions in Nigeria, had been dealt additional blows until she settled for sleepovers at the hospital, having been expending so much on transportation to cover all what turned out to be fruitless trips between her Ijoko, Ogun State residence, and NOHIL.

Several other outpatients, all under anonymity, also spoke in a similar vein, resorting to passing nights at NOHIL in order to cut costs in accessing services promptly.

At the rate things are going, if the Federal Government fails to take urgent remediation steps to arrest the exodus of NOHIL’s personnel for greener pastures abroad, the hospital may very soon be rendered comatose and fold, as the Japa syndrome poses a serious existential threat to the hospital.