The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions, Hon. Patrick Umoh, has reaffirmed President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to better healthcare service delivery to Nigerians.
Umoh, disclosing this when he led members of the committee on an oversight visit to the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, added that President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to health is seen in the 2025 budgets for health and interventions in the nation’s hospitals.
He said, “The core mandate of our committee is to oversee this premier hospital, evaluate the 2024 budget performance index, look at their projections in 2025, see how the hospital has fared in the past years and what the future holds for the hospital.
“We’ll go to the OPD departmental section and also meet with patients to reassure them that it is the objective of government to provide healthcare for the people. We live in a very challenging time where the JAPA syndrome has almost taken over.
“But then we have confidence in the health system in our country, and we know that with the commitment of President Ahmed Tinubu, a lot will change in the health sector. He has committed so much in 2025 budgets and the interventions that have come to the hospital to ensure we have a better healthcare service delivery for our people.”
The UCH Chief Medical Director (CMD), Professor Jesse Otegbayo, said the challenges of the hospital included the need to acquire more equipment and recruitment of staff to be able to give the best to patients and do well in its core mandates, which are clinical services, research and training.
Otegbayo appreciated the committee for the visit while promising that the hospital would continue to do its best to fulfil its mandate.
“They have asked us to do a summary of our needs and forward it, so I’m happy that something good will come out of this visit,” Otegbayo said.
Earlier, the CMD of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Prof. John Oyeniyi, identified power, infrastructural decadence and waivers to employ as major challenges faced by the hospital.
“We have critical needs for staff employment, but one of them, the most important right now, will be the provision of power. The hospital is placed on band A, and the cost of that is really daunting. To pay for the amounts of indebtedness and monthly fees that vary from ₦60 million to ₦80 million each month is daunting.
“We have also changed our streetlights and other facilities to be solar-based, moving up dependency on the national grid, which is the way to go sustainably. But it is very expensive to start up and maintain. So we need help to bring in solar, which we cannot do from internally generated revenue.”
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