The authorities of the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) may be dragged to court by aggrieved parents over the loss of their babies in the Intensive Care Baby Unit (ICBU) of the hospital during a power failure that lasted for over two hours.
Five babies in the incubators died recently when the public electricity supply failed without an alternative power supply to keep the incubators working.But the hospital has denied the allegation, saying though some babies in the incubators died in ICBU, it had nothing to do with power failure.
A consultant Paediatrician, Dr. Bose Toma, who spoke on behalf of JUTH, agreed that though that there were several cases of power failure in the hospital, “it’s no secret, you and I know the situation of power in the country. We however do our best all the same to manage the situation”.
The doctor insisted that the babies died either of congenital infections or because they were born pre-term and not because of power failure.
But the parents of the babies have insisted that the painful loss was due to power failure, and are threatening to drag the authorities of the hospital to court.
They said they had complained bitterly to the doctors on duty when the power failed and the hospital management failed to provide an alternative source of power, but the doctors reportedly said they were helpless about the situation.
The Public Relations Manager of JUTH, Mrs. Ngozi Okpara, also insisted that it could not be true that the babies died as a result of power failure “because there is a stand-by generating plant that comes up immediately power goes off”.
But dismissing Okpara’s claim and narrating his experience, a Rotarian, Mr. Duke Dochor Agbaje, whose baby also died, said on several occasions he had to go to the hospital with his lantern from the house to assist the doctors, who use torches to attend to the babies during power outages.
He said the doctors are good but they operate in an empty hospital with no facilities, insisting that JUTH needs to be overhauled.
Agbaje narrated how he was forced to call his fellow Rotarians who work in the hospital to inform them of the deplorable power situation each time they had to use his lantern to attend to his sick child, but all he got from them were pleas that the situation would get better until his child eventually bled to death.
Another parent, Mr. Gyang Bere, a journalist with National Life Newspaper who also lost his baby in the incubator saga, confirmed Agbaje’s claim, saying his baby died in a similar harrowing manner.
He advised that a drastic measure had to be taken about the deplorable situation in JUTH, especially in terms of power failure.
The respect accorded the JUTH in the past as a centre for excellence is fast depleting as patients and their relations are beginning to shift attention from the hospital to the ECWA Evangelical Hospital (now Bingham University Teaching Hospital) where they reportedly receive better medical care, with better facilities, including constant power supply.
A resident doctor in JUTH recently had to take his sick wife from Jos to Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH) in Kano for routine dialysis when he observed that his hospital had nothing to offer in that regard.
Patients are now calling on the Federal Government and well-meaning Nigerians to intervene
Writen by From Seriki Adinoyi in Jos, 11.11.2010
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