Corruption? Drug Scarcity Hits Aso Rock Clinic Despite N3.87 Billion Budget

 

Punch reports that the State House Medical Centre in Abuja has suffered lack of drugs and other medical necessities which is an anomaly considering the billions of naira allocated to it the 2016 national budget of 'change'.

 

The clinic that garnered a whooping sum of N3.87 billion allocation provides medical services to the President, Vice-President and their families, aides, members of staff of the State House and other entitled public servants. In addition to this, it is also a training facility for house officers and other medical personnel.

 

The eminent clinic which yearly gulps massive allocations is currently being reduced to a mere building inhabited by human beings. A cross-section of the centre’s patients said that they were now being asked to go and buy drugs from outside as they were no longer available in the centre.

Most hit, it was further learnt, are patients with kidney problems who are currently undergoing dialysis in the facility.

Although, some of them are expected to be undergoing the dialysis at least twice a week, the centre’s management has been cancelling such exercise lately, therefore putting the lives of the patients at risk.

In some instances when they attend to them, the patients are made to come with some of the items the doctors will use for the exercise.

Many other patients who spoke said the medical centre could no longer boast of “ordinary malaria drugs.”

“The clinic does not even have ordinary paracetamol. Paracetamol was included in the list of drugs they asked me to go and buy recently. Before now, they were giving us drugs.” another patient said.

The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, did not pick his calls when a correspondent attempted to get his reaction on Tuesday.

He also did not respond to a text message sent to him on the issue. The questions on the lips of Nigerians is the fate of the funds allocated to the clinic which is suspected to have been diverted by government officials under the nose of the anti-corruption warlord, President Muhammadu Buhari.