Hospitals have mechanisms to be helpful to less privileged patients, ATBTH CMD declares

IT has been declared that by their positions as places of succour, hospitals have mechanisms to address the medical needs of less privileged people in the society who do not have money to access medical services.

The declaration was made by the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi, Dr Mohammed Alkali who explained the mechanism is an investment which everybody should be interested in which the teaching hospital has been championing irrespective of all the challenges associated to it.

The CMD who was speaking while receiving members of a Bauchi based Non-Governmental Organisation, ‘Hope for the Living Steve Joy Foundation’ (Hope-L) in his office on Tuesday said that the hospital has over the years developed a Coffers’ Fund Intervention which people and corporate bodies have shown interest.

Accordingly, he revealed, every quarter of the Union Bank of Nigeria contributes the sum of N3 million to the intervention fund for patients that cannot afford the hospital fees or services but was dismayed that such support to the fund has for sometimes now not being forthcoming.

“Over the years this type of support has not been coming, so even if the hospital comes to help people in the emergency situation, it has to be paid because it’s a revolving fund we are running, there is no money that comes from anywhere. We buy the consumables we use on patients, so if people that cannot pay are more than those that can pay, the revolving fund will collapse,” Mohammed Alkali cried.

The CMD added that: “And that is the situation we are heading to because by our training we cannot see somebody in an emergency and refuse to attend to him. And unfortunately by our own Nigerian way, those little efforts we are making some people abuse it even within our staff.”

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Dr Mohammed Alkakli, however, observed that it is difficult for the system to cope with the challenges, and therefore advised the Hope-L foundation to create awareness for those that need to come to the aid of people that cannot be able to help themselves.

He also said that people need to be honest enough to declare truly their status, citing an example that,  ‘There was one Fulani man we got at a critical moment, staff were trying to help him when large sums of money dropped out of his pocket”, adding  that on interrogation the man said that, “they said I should say I don’t have money”, and it is our staff.”

Mohammed Alkali then commended the Foundation for considering him worthy of a position of a Patron and described as necessary the evolvement of a mechanism by any hospital to address the less-privileged.

Speaking earlier, the Hope-L Foundation founder, Steve Joy attributed the bestowment of the organisation’s patron on the CMD to his track records and commitment to the cause of the people, saying his contributions to the society is very appreciative.

He explained that “What we literally do is that we want to see how we can build a network of people who have and help them channel it to those who don’t have, and our major focus is looking at the hospital aspect because that is where we have abandon people.”

Steve Joy traced the history of the foundation to 2014 when he was serving as a youth corps member, saying Hope-L was formed as a response to the people who are less-privileged, and not able to cater for some responsibilities.