Apprehension As Pregnant Nigerian Women Decry Staff Shortage In Hospital

Daily Trust reports that pregnant women have cried out over lack of medical personnel.

They decried the shortage of doctors and nurses at the Jummai Babangida Maternal and Neonatal Wing of the General Hospital, Minna, Niger State.

When City & Crime visited the wing on Monday morning, there were no fewer than 300 women on ground seeking antenatal services but only one doctor was around to attend to them.

It was gathered that hundreds of women seek antenatal services daily at the hospital which has only six doctors.

One of the women, Mrs Blessing Uche, told City & Crime that some of them came to the hospital as early as 5am but were not attended to due to inadequacy of doctors and nurses.

Another woman, Zannan Sule, said, “Some days the hospital’s officials will tell us that there are only two doctors and that they cannot attend to more than 40 women in a day.”

A nurse, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told our reporter that, “In the last one year, none of us has gone on annual leave because there are no staff to take over. We have only four doctors and two consultants, and they don’t come to work every day. A doctor just left the office after working for 24; hours which is not supposed to be. A nurse worked in this hospital for 13 days without a shift because there are no personnel. Two of our volunteer nurses left on Friday without notifying us because they were not paid their stipends.”

No official of the hospital was willing to speak on the situation and effort to get the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr Mohammed Gana, to speak was also not successful.