‘LUTH, others can handle medical cases that take some Nigerians overseas’

• Kick-starts measures to stop frequent strikes by doctors, health workers • Refurbishes IVF centre, completes power station to ensure 24-hour electricity supply • 50% of women that visit Hospital’s oncology centre have breast cancer
Teaching hospitals in Nigeria including the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi-Araba, can handle all the specialised medical cases like kidney transplant that some Nigerians travel overseas to procure.

Chief Medical Director (CMD) of LUTH, Prof. Bode Chris, in an exclusive interview with The Guardian said: “Of course yes, we can handle these cases. There are so many centres in Nigeria that can do it cheaper. For a kidney transplant you don’t need more than N5 million in Lagos to day.”

So why are people not coming to LUTH and other teaching hospitals? Bode explained: “We need to work the talk. It is an index of believability. They need to believe that you can do it. If you can cut somebody’s head and attach it back successfully, if people don’t know about you, what will they do? They will go somewhere else, that is the issue.”

The consultant surgeon, however, said some Nigerians that travel to India for treatment come back worse than they left. He explained: “Going to India should not be the lot of any of us. Many of them who go are attracted to come there because of the glamour that ‘I am travelling abroad’ and also because the Indians seem to have captured the mindset of Nigerians and tell them, ‘look they cannot treat you in Nigeria’ and our people fall for it. Meanwhile they are looking at it not because they love you as a Nigerian but because they love your money. The day the money you take there finishes, they put you on the next plane. Many die on their way back and the Nigeria people don’t get to know of this. Many are also badly treated, not professionally treated. They are given the wrong or suboptimal treatment but because you cannot go back there to complain.

“Unfortunately some Nigerians assist those Indians referring patients to them, which to me bothers on criminality. Why should you be referring patients because of money they will get back, these are all things we will know. But with a better managed healthcare system with deepening public private partnership (PPP) in healthcare management, with people working for money that they get from the system this will stop.”

He acknowledged that the linear accelerator- machine for treating cancer- shut down two months ago but the management has provided the N18 million needed to repair it even as he said that 50 per cent of women that visit the oncology centre have breast cancer.

The consultant paediatric surgeon said the World Gastroenterology Organisation (WGO) has designated LUTH as the Endoscopic Centre for West Africa and that the Hospital has started a Biomedical Engineering School/Unit that offers Ordinary National Diploma (OND) and Higher National Diploma (HND).

He also said the Hospital offers open heart surgeries, renal transplantation and In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) at a cheaper rate than what is obtained overseas or in private hospitals.

On the oncology centre, Bode said: “The machine broke down two months ago. It will cost us N18 million to repair it. We have raised the money. There are also plans to engage with another private investor to install another linear accelerator.”

Bode said LUTH has also kick started measures to stop frequent strikes by doctors under the aegis of the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) and the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA); and other health workers under the umbrella of Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU).

He said the management of LUTH is going to hold a retreat at the weekend to develop a set of guidelines and rules of engagement that will help them sanitise the system.

Bode also dismissed insinuations that people are not patronizing LUTH well enough because of the high cost of medical services but rather due to frequent strikes by doctors and other health workers.

He explained: “The cost of medical services has not changed for the past three years and the easiest one is the cost of surgery. We charged N135, 000 for major surgeries here. Patients in Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) Ikeja are charged N130, 000. And for our N135, 000 we add other services like something like histology. If we do surgery on you whatever is got from you is sent to the laboratory without you paying, without them asking you to come and pay anything again.

“The problem is not the cost of services in LUTH, it is the stop and start, and stop and start and stop. Let me ask you for example The Guardian is the flagship of newspapers in the country. If you publish for one week now and you don’t publish for another three months and then you publish for one week and you don’t publish for another six weeks, do you think people will continue buying your paper? What will be your brand? People will look at your brand as being erratic. That is what is happening in this kind of Hospital.

“Last year we were not working for more than half of the year; from one strike action or another- JOHESU strike to ARD strike, NMA strike and so on. We didn’t work. When I started here in March, the first thing was that I called all the unions, all the departments to tell them was that we should have the first 1000 days strike free. Let us rebuild this brand. People don’t want to know us for striking; they want to know us for services.

“My message to Nigerians is this: there is no crisis in LUTH. We are working, our trainees are getting ready for exams, and we have no place for strike actions anymore. Anybody that has any issues they know institutional and national avenues, there are enough institutional and national avenues to seek redress rather than turning this into a union issue. If you go to a union to seek for justice, you should go with clean hands. Somebody who has refused to vacate a student accommodation over a year after he left as a student has dirty hands going to his colleagues to say he has been assaulted even when we know that it is a cocktail lie. Our preliminary investigation showed that he was not assaulted but we are waiting for the outcome of the panel.”

Bode further explained: “If we are working at optimal levels, the people coming here for X ray alone in a day, your wife will be shopping in Dubai every weekend if you owe that place. Patients coming here for services are so many. What we should do is give them the services, not give them excuses.

“ So we need to remain consistently focused, open and work for the next two, three years solidly without a break and that is what we are trying to do. If we can remove all the things that cause strikes. If we can make unions, groups that think they owe the farm and it is only when they say so that we can work. We can let them know that you are only a part of us; you are not the commanding structure here. Then things will work, that is what we are trying to do, which they are afraid of. That is what they are afraid of because they are realizing that they are not calling the shots anymore. If you call a strike and the hospital is still open, then how will you feel? They want to continue to able to continue to call strike over even this issue of alleged assault. I am sure very soon they will call out doctors to go on strike. Is not that ridiculous?”

Bode insisted that LUTH is meeting its mandate of providing specialized medical care to Nigerians with the refurbishment of the IVF centre and completion of the power station to ensure 24-hour electricity supply in the Hospital.

The paediatric surgeon said: “We have a new electricity power station. They are laying gas pipeline for us from Ojuelegba, Jibowu area. Once the gas gets here we will have uninterrupted power supply in the hospital. The power station will give us 24-hour electricity supply. We are having quite a number of good things. This week our IVF centre has started working already because told Prof. Giwa Osagie, ‘before you leave this compound you must reestablish IVF.’ Osagie is the joint pioneer of IVF in Nigeria with Prof. Oladapo Ashiru.

“We invite various specialists from all over the world even within Nigeria to come and help us, and show us what you do best so that we can learn it and various departments are doing that now in a way that skills can be transferred. What we want is for everybody to gain from it, we send people on new trainings and let everybody know that we want to revamp the hospital in line with modern day practices both in surgical area and all that.

“Our beds which has not being replaced since the beginning of the hospital, we are beginning a gradual phased replacement of those beds; so many good things.

“People who enjoy coming to work because they like working are the ones we want to be in LUTH. Cadres that think that all they want is their own entitlements- money, money, until we here alert we are not going to work. Let them go and work somewhere else. It is not by force, people who have forgotten their oaths of why they should be serving the public have no place here. That is my message. If they are ready I will work with them till the end of the Earth otherwise whatever they throw at me don’t get me.”

Reacting for the call for his removal as the CMD of LUTH by the Lagos State chapter of NMA on the grounds that there is no security in the Hospital and that he has reached 60 years, Bode said: “It has been a long time coming. What we are witnessing is actually a process whereby a minority but radical and vocal group within the publicly employed medical system are fighting not only for prominence, but they are fighting to take over leadership for their own narrow selfish gains. What are these gains? So that the status-quo ante where they are able to call and direct doctors to go on strike, direct people not to work cant continue why they continue to benefit from the system at the tax payers expense. That is the crux of the matter. We saw the unfortunate pronouncement of someone who sat on the exalted seat of the Chairman of Lagos State branch the NMA making a pronouncement that the CMD of LUTH should be removed. He used that exalted seat to make an unfortunate set of declarations…”