Why we opened cash and carry pharmacy centre at UCH —Otegbayo, UCH’s CMD

The Chief  Medical Director, University  College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Professor Abiodun Otegbayo, says the hospital’s new Cash and Carry Pharmacy Centre is in the spirit of patient friendliness and to augment patient’s comfort and care.

Professor Otegbayo, while inaugurating the pharmacy centre, said it is to ensure fewer exits of the hospital’s patients and relatives going to source drugs outside the hospital and generate revenue for the hospital.

He said the pharmacy would run a 24-hour service so as to relieve the usual encumbrances at the hospital’s regular pharmacy, since medicines can be purchased without any prescription from the hospital.

“Here, you bring your cash, you pay and go,” he said.

According to Otegbayo, the hospital intends to open two additional cash and carry pharmacy centres.

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Earlier, he highlighted some of the achievements of the hospital since the inception of his administration. He said, “I can say with all sense of responsibility that in the last few months, we have broken new grounds, and it is our fervent hope that we shall be alive to see these efforts come to fruition.

“In the last 100 days, we have succeeded in procuring an N8 million Gene Expert Machine, Fresenius Renal Dialysis Machine at N10.8 million; supplied spirometer for medicine laboratory and also secured training in Nuclear Medicine for one of our doctors in South Africa and also paid N9 million for freighting of 300 donated beds from Canada.

Otegbayo promised to work out strategies and policies to minimise unhealthy inter-professional rivalry and incessant strikes in the institution in the interest of the patients.

UCH’s Director, Pharmaceutical Services, Mrs Helen Oduntan, said the pharmacy outlet would be a one-stop shop and would be stocked based on a survey of the needs of the hospital’s patients and their relations.

Mrs Oduntan assured that the pharmacy outlet would address drug shortages since it is computerised would able to adequately monitor and stock based on patients needs.

She declared: “New drugs are developed every day and immediately a prescription is approved by the hospital management and the consulting team, we will make sure it is available in this pharmacy outlet.”

In his remarks, Dr Victor Akimoladun, the chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, said that the management would pay special attention to the Sepeteri and Okuku medical outposts of the institution, which are also comprehensive hospitals to provide for the healthcare needs of the people in Oke-Ogun.