…No light, no water for over a year.
…Nurses down tools.
by Achadu Gabriel, Kaduna
A General Hospital at Sabon Tasha, Kaduna, one of the state’s-owned secondary health facility located in Chikun LGA of Kaduna South in Kaduna State has been reportedly abandoned, amidst diphtheria disease spread.
Our correspondent, who visited the area, reported that the hospital in Sabon Tasha, a densely population suburb of Kaduna Town, has not been having electricity and water for well over one year till date.
Over sixty (60) Nurses and Midwives working in the facility, who could no longer bear the condition, have withdrawn their services, a female nurse leader who pleaded anonymity made the revelation in an interview Tuesday.
The Nurses leader, who spoke to our correspondent extensively, said they had laid the complaints to their management staff several times, in written and verbatim, but no solution was found to problems.
“Presently, we have withdrawn our services as Nurses and Midwifery, since last Saturday 00hours. We are more than sixty in number.
“The reason is that, we have been working without light and water for the past one year, that was since first week of September, 2022.
“We’ve been complaining, the management has been writing to them in the ministries, including that of health, the commissioners, to the Head of Service, Secretaries, among others, but up till now nothing has changed,” she said.
She also said they had, through the management made entries and correspondences to the relevant authorities under the current administration of Governor Uba Sani, but yet to see any change or solutions.
“Yes, we’ve written to the current administration through our management several times. We have management here, we complained to them about lack of light and water, which they received our complaints and then forwarded it also to the authorities alongside the complaints they have been making.
She added that, “When that one was not attended to, we wrote them and gave them ultimatum, around July and August 2023. They pleaded we should give them some times to see how they can resolve it with the ministry here.
“The problems lingered as we did not see anything being done. We wrote another ultimatum again, that, if light and water did not come we will cease our services, and gave them time to do that.
“So, we did not see them doing anything until the ultimatum expired, and we withdrew our services,” she narrated with lamentation.
“We used to copy our national body each time we write to the hospital management,” she further stated, and stressed that, “So, the authority went to our national officers and pleaded with them and asked them to appeal to us to give them some times. We also gave them, and we gave them up to almost one month and nothing happened. So, we withdrew our services.”
According to her, the electric transformer developed problems and went off, and was out of function like almost eight months before they took it for repair and later brought back the transformer, after series of complaints and pressure,” she noted.
She also said the transformer blew up again and again, and could no longer function or be useful to the hospital anymore till date.
However, the nurses’ spokesperson said they have no knowledge of such problems in any of their sister facilities in other parts of the state within the metropolis.
Accordingly, she also lamented that the light is the one that gives them water in the hospital because they use borehole, saying, “Imagining when people come for deliveries, admissions, in blood transmission, emergency in the hospital?
“All the nursing services we render most times we use our phones, rechargeables, which do not last. Imagine when you attend to patients and you have no water to wash your hands.
“It’s unethical that from hospital you go and touch other people without washing your hands. It’s against our ethnic. We suppose to observe universal profession declaration; washing of hands is very key,” she said.
On what happens to the hospital morgue (or mortuary), she explained that, even though, it has been managed privately, it sometimes goes stinky – sort of kind of polluting the facilities.
All efforts to see the Chief Medical Director failed, as he was absent at the time our reporter visited.
Another contact attempt was made through the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Uba Sani, Mohammed Lawal Shehu, but even he could not respond at press time.