As economic situation worsens, UBTH waives N35m patients’ bill

The management of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) yesterday lamented the rising cases of patients not being able to pay their medical bills which it said has forced the hospital to subsidise medical bills in the face of scarce resources.
    
Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Darlington Obaseki, said the hospital gave a waiver of N35million between January-December 2017 to patients. He spoke to reporters at the celebration of his 50th birthday. According to him, “We discovered that many couldn’t pay their bills due to the general economic situation and we can´t turn people back. As at December 2017, we gave waiver of over N35million bills owed by patients and that is a lot of money that we really cant afford,” he stated.
   
Speaking on how his administration ended incessant strike action by staff of the hospital, Obaseki explained, “We will go the extra mile to make them happy because that is the key to motivating them. My dream is that in the next four years, we will not experience any local strike.”   
“For a hospital as big as UBTH, we expect to have back up generators and this is one of the major issues we have. We are hoping to get more funds to get more equipment,” he stated.