The Acting Chief Medical Director (CMD), Dr Isaac Udo, stated this in Uyo while conducting a verification team from the Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) round some projects in the hospital.
Udo said that the General Out-Patient Department block was of top priority to the hospital because its completion would decongest the Administrative Block currently housing outpatients and some laboratories.
The Acting CMD used the occasion to appeal to the Akwa Ibom Government to redeem the pledge of N100 million made to the hospital by Governor Udom Emmanuel two years ago.
He said that the building project, which was almost 70 per cent completed, could have been occupied long ago if the state government had redeemed its pledge.
Udo, however, added that the hospital was reaching out to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) for intervention.
“We are over-stretched here in the areas of manpower and physical structure. We receive an average of 1, 200 patients here daily because there is no general hospital in the state capital.
“We have only 120 consultants, 400 resident doctors and medical officers out of the total staff of 2,300 personnel in the hospital.
“This is a 500-bed space-tertiary-health facility taking care of all manner of ailments that could have been handled at the primary and secondary healthcare levels,” Udo said.
Other projects shown the delegation include the uncompleted laboratory building, the uncompleted CT scan building and orthopaedic theatre building completed but not furnished.
The delegation also inspected the fully equipped mortuary complex and the completed 11kva electricity line.
Speaking at the end of the verification, the leader of FRC delegation, Mr Ibrahim Dauda, said that he was satisfied with the level of projects executed in the hospital.
Dauda called on the Federal Government to make more funds available to the hospital to enable it complete all the ongoing projects especially the General Outpatient Block started in 2010.
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