investigative report has revealed that the multi-billion Naira Ibom Specialist
Hospital in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, which was built by Godswill
Akpabio, has been shutdown.
The Ibom Specialist Hospital has been shut down just two years after it
was built and commissioned by the Godswill Akpabio administration. What
happened?
Almost all the health workers
in the hospital were foreigners, mostly from India.
Mr. Akpabio had
boasted that the hospital, which he described as ‘world class’, was better
equipped and higher in status than university teaching hospitals in Nigeria, and
that it was going to promote medical tourism in the country.
The
multi-million dollar hospital was shut down in September after its private
managers terminated their contract with the state government and withdrew from
the facility.
When Premium Times visited the hospital on Monday evening,
the facility was locked down; apart from the security officials, not a single
person was inside its massive buildings.
Visitors were not allowed
entry.
Some persons who had worked in the hospital said that the private
managers – Cardiocare Medical Services Ltd – left because of unresolved issues
bordering on funding by the state government.
The Commissioner for Health
in the state, Dominic Ukpong, confirmed on Wednesday to this newspaper that the
hospital has been closed down.
Mr. Ukpong, a medical doctor, admitted
that there was a disagreement between the state government and Cardiocare Ltd
over the funding of the Ibom Specialist Hospital. But he also accused Cardiocare
of poor management of the facility.
“The administration of the hospital,
in my opinion, has not been satisfactory,” Mr. Ukpong said.
“Their
excuses have been that government didn’t meet its own part of the obligation.
But I am a witness to the huge amount of money the government has given to the
service provider to run the hospital. And we haven’t had much to show for it,”
the health commissioner said.
He said money was released at various times
for the running of the hospital, besides the $5 million start-off fund the state
government gave to Cardiocare Ltd.
The hospital could not get its
electric power from the power company since it was not connected to the national
grid.
Mr. Ukpong said: “Apart from the fact that the state government was
giving diesel free to their quarters, I remember that at some point the state
government gave N250 million to them (Cardiocare), at their request, which they
said they wanted to use to pay salaries.
“As soon as they were given the
money they came and said that that was for arrears. They came back for more
money. The state government has given them N50 million, also on
request.
“They asked that the government should be paying them N30
million monthly for them to pay salaries to some consultants, especially the
neurosurgeon. We gave them the money.”
Mr. Ukpong said that the former
governor, Mr. Akpabio, who is the Senate Minority Leader, intervened around June
and mediated in a meeting between the state government and
Cardiocare.
Cardiocare, Mr. Ukpong said, did not honour any of the
agreement reached at the meeting, among which was that the company should
present to the state government a price-list of the services the hospital was
rendering.
“You know people were complaining about the high cost of
getting medical services there, and we wanted to make sure that our people had
access to the medical care offered in the facility,” he said.
Mr. Ukpong
said Cardiocare had insisted that they were scaling down the hospital operation
because of lack of funds, but that the company refused to present a proposal for
it to the government as agreed in the meeting.
The commissioner said the
government released N180 million to Cardiocare after the meeting that was
mediated by Mr. Akpabio.
“As soon as they collected the money they left,”
Mr. Ukpong said.
A medical doctor who used to work in the hospital told
Premium Times that it struggled for survival as it did not enjoy much patronage
from people within and outside Akwa Ibom.
The doctor, who did not want
his name mentioned in this report, said Governor Udom Emmanuel and his
administration did not care much about how the hospital was faring, adding that
the governor never visited or promoted the hospital in order to encourage local
patronage.
Akwa Ibom State Governor, Udom Emmanuel
The doctor said
that what may have eventually brought down the hospital was the “huge” resources
it spent on the treatment of the victims of the December 2016 Uyo Church
building collapse.
“Our hospital was where they brought almost everybody
to; even people that were taken to other hospitals still came back to our
hospital for treatment,” he said. “We had up to 80 surgeries or more. We had
over a hundred patients at that time.”
He said the state government did
not pay for the treatment of the patients until things became really bad for the
hospital.
“The governor released money in July, but by that time things
were already bad, the surgeons that were making money for the hospital left,” he
said.
The health commissioner, Mr. Ukpong, responded to the allegation,
saying that the N180 million the state government gave to Cardiocare Ltd was
partly meant for the treatment of the victims of the Reigners’ Bible Church
collapse.
“They gave me an outrageous bill which I couldn’t agree with as
a doctor,” he said.
“They were asking for N294 million for 300
out-patients and about 70-something in-patients. The hospital was complaining
about money before the church incident. So, let nobody use that incident as an
excuse,” he said.
Media reports put the amount at which the Akpabio
administration used in setting up the hospital at N30 billion. But the health
commissioner, Mr. Ukpong, said it was about N41 billion.
The hospital,
which was one of the signature projects of the Akpabio administration, was
hurriedly inaugurated in May 2015, few days to the end of the administration,
even when the buildings were yet to be completed.
Governor Emmanuel said in June that the hospital was not well-equipped
to produce optimum results, an assertion that has been re-echoed by the health
commissioner.
“The whole thing wasn’t totally completed. The dialysis
section didn’t come through. Three modular theatres were not yet completed. Some
of the areas were not completed because the contractors did not have all their
money,”said Mr. Ukpong, who revealed that the hospital was running at only 10
per cent of its total capacity.
The commissioner said the agreement
between the state government and Cardiocare Ltd was done clearly in favour of
the latter, adding that his office, for instance, didn’t have any supervisory
role in the entire arrangement.
Also, he said he was not aware that the
hospital managers ever paid money to the state government, despite the agreement
stipulating that they would be paying some revenues to the
government.
Some patients who had paid medical fees to the hospital
before it was shut down, unfortunately, became stranded when they were later
prevented from entering the facility.
Inih Ebong, a former lecturer in
the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, was among the patients that were stuck
after paying money to the hospital for a check-up.
Mr. Ebong had paid
N30,000 for an abdominal scan – Barium enema – recommended by the University of
Uyo Teaching Hospital, UUTH, which referred him to the hospital.
The
health workers at the Ibom Specialist Hospital, on three different days, kept
asking Mr. Ebong to come back for a scan even when they must have known that the
hospital was about being shut down. They told him at some point that they could
not conduct the scan because of equipment breakdown.
Mr. Ebong till date
has not been able to do the scan or get a refund from the hospital.
“And
this was a scan that required you to stay without eating any food for at least
two days before it,” Mr. Ebong said.
“In addition to that, they had
prescribed a laxative for me to take, two tablets in the morning and another two
in the evening. Then on the third day, the day for the scan proper, I was told
to have an enema to clear whatever food particle may have remained in my
digestive system,” he said, adding that he took a total of 24 tablets of the
laxative and got fed up with it.
Mr. Ebong said he repeated the process
of emptying his bowel thrice in less than one month, on the doctor’s advice,
while waiting for the hospital to call him in for the scan.
When he
telephoned the hospital on September 21, instead of being told to come in for a
scan, he was informed that the facility had been shut down, Mr. Ebong
said.
“The radiologist that picked up my call told me that there was no
point coming to the hospital as the security guard won’t let me into the
hospital premises,” he said.
The health commissioner, Mr. Ukpong, said
for now nobody could say when the hospital would re-open. The state government,
he said, was talking with investors from Dubai and Canada.
Apart from
this, the commissioner said they are doing their best to maintain the hi-tech
equipment.
Mr. Ukpong added; “I feel upset that it has come to this, but
I also feel relieved that a poor administration has left.”
