Bu Husseyn Mbar
Bauchi – Dr Mohammed Alkali, Chief Medical Director, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi, says lack of infrastructure has limited the hospital’s capacity to deliver ideal services.
Alkali made the observation in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
in Bauchi on Monday
“The infrastructure are things that are challenging because the initial design of the hospital was that of a service hospital.
“And what we did initially at inception was actually to set up appropriate structures that are in consonance with the current mandate of the hospital to teach, to do research, and to train.
“And then the older ones that we could modify we have modified because of the challenges of financing we couldn’t do as much as we planned to do.
“And some of the structures we put like the radiology and modular theatres, we were not able to equip them to our expectations.
“But we believe that this is what we are going to focus on and of course the challenges we discovered that at that time we had a trauma centre and we thought that it will carter for our activities but we suddenly realise that it’s too inadequate.
“And that is why we started the second phase which is ongoing now.
“We had some challenges we could have finished it this year, but I believe that by next year we will complete it and put it to use.’’
He also blamed the poor services being provided at the facility on the attitude of some of the staff towards work.
He said: “We inherited over 90 per cent of the staff from the state government and they are used to working within the state government system
“And of course we employed a few more, but the ones that we inherited are much more in number.
“Their working culture and the way they operate is quite different from what is expected.
“I have a lot of challenges because you should not expect someone who does not know something to give that thing he or she does not know or have.
“We sent a couple of them on in-house training and some to other institutions for training.
“Although we are employing new ones, who understand this practice, we feel that the time has come for us to establish a culture for the institution as a federal tertiary institution.”
NAN recalls that the hospital had organised a retreat for its principal staff in an efforts to address some of the challenges being faced by the institution.