Doctors use candles in Edo - NMA lament over facilities

Edo State chapter of Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, has raised alarm over health facilities in the state.

The state chairman of NMA, Dr Emmanuel Osaigbovo, while briefing journalists in Benin city, called for immediate restoration of health facilities, adding that doctors use candles and lanterns in hospital wards rather than electricity.

He urged the state government to declare state of emergency in the health sector and renovate health care facilities in order to stop unnecessary deaths in the hospital.

“Today, there is hardly any functional ward that is befitting for the people to recover from their infirmities. The wards are dilapidated and ironically pose a major health risk to those who are being cared for and those who render services therein.

“In some of these obsolete facilities, doctors in their usual zeal to work resort to the use of candles and personal rechargeable lanterns when the authorities fail to provide basic electricity.

“The buildings are falling apart in their numbers due to lack of maintenance.

“We seriously hope that there is no collapse of one of those buildings on people who have come to the hospital to get better or on those who have come there to make people feel better.

“There is no greater catastrophe than that. The theatres and laboratories are at best skeletal in the services they render due to lack of basic equipment and consumables.

“Patients have to seek help in peripheral facilities and most times fall into the hands of quacks”, Osaigbovo lamented.