Medical Republic
TALES OF A GOVERNMENT TERTIARY HOSPITAL
The only thing that can compare to a Government tertiary hospital is waiting to be captured for the FRSC Driver’s license and the wait is real!
If you know no body there, you will have to wake up as early as 5:00 am to get to the hospital latest by 7:00 am; surprisingly the idea was not yours alone as you will meet a crowd.
You then take your card to retrieve your folder and pray in your heart that your folder is intact. In some cases your folder may be missing and all medical records lost and there is nothing you can do about it. You can spend minutes to hours in this station.
You then go to the nurses station to get your vitals checked but of course you must wait for your turn. This can take minutes to hours as only 2 nurses which is a very generous number will take the vital signs of hundreds of patients.
You then wait to see the doctor and you notice you are number 30. You see the door to the consulting room but seeing and getting inside is a different kettle of fish. After waiting for hours you see the doctor, who will likely see you for 15 minutes maximum.
He also has to see Patient number 50 and it’s 12 noon already. You notice that he is alone, you hear him talk about salaries to another doctor that walked inside. From their discussion you discover he has not been paid for months. He orders some investigations for you in the laboratory and writes some drugs for you to buy.
You get to the laboratory by 1:00 pm it is located more than 1 km from the clinic. But by the time you get there, the crowd waiting to pass through the single door is more in number than the sick people that littered the pool of Bethesda. A famished and angry looking receptionist barely looks at you and tells you to come the next day, you are so tired to even argue.
You get to the pharmacy, everyone in the hospital buys drugs there. The crowd there is more than the number you met in the laboratory, only 2 pharmacists are attending to the crowd. As you wait you begin to feel very dizzy. It finally gets to your turn and after waiting you discover they do not have some drugs in the prescription and you will need to buy it outside the hospital.
You leave the hospital by 4:00 pm, you virtually spent your whole day there, you get home feeling very tired. When you get home, you put on your television and hear that a rich man been tried for financial issues and been held in prison is seeking for medical treatment abroad.
Your head is banging, the stress of going to the hospital is even worse than the condition you went to treat in the hospital and the stress will kill you faster than your ill health. You forget taking your drug and sleep off. In the midst of your sleep you dream and you find your self with the Minister of Science and technology.
In the dream, you tell him to collaborate with the ministry of health and ICT companies and develop software and programmes that will contain the data of all the patients in the hospital, so that instead of going to waste your time collecting folders when you get to the hospital, with one click and a code, all your information will be on a laptop in the doctors office.
You also tell him to link up the laboratory , pharmacy and other units to the doctor so results can be sent to him directly and he can communicate with them in real time…as you are about to say more things, you also beg him to inform the Minister of Health that the hospital needs more hands
You wake up with a fever… and decide not to go back to the hospital again.
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By Ovundah Nyeche
Many times I jokingly tell my friends I have triplets. Well when you have 3 children which includes twins below the age of 5 what else is that called? Lol
Truly speaking, many times I do my reading and prepare for many of my seminars and presentations at work or even in the library, because once daddy steps inside house na full time work don start.
Remove your eyes from your kids and boom something…
We try our best to keep our home as safe as possible, but with kids, safety is also of the Lord.
Years ago, while doing my NYSC in Ekiti State, an unconscious child was brought into the hospital with a crowd following him.
My duty was to wake up the child by fire or by force, unfortunately, those who brought the child were not giving me any useful information.
How long has this child being unconscious… Today!
Fever… Kosi!
Trauma to the head… Kosi!
Vomiting… Kosi!
Convulsion… Kosi!
Last meal… Recently!
It was obvious my talk was taking me to no where, I had no glucometer to check the child’s blood sugar who was barely 3 years old, I decided to treat as a case of cerebral malaria, and I set up everything.
On a 2nd note, the smell from the child’s mouth was somehow, somehow… It was smelling kaikaish.
No…. Wetyn pikin go dey do with Kaikai?
No information was coming forth…
Treatment started and boom grandmother shows from nowhere with an empty Kaikai bottle…
My little patient had looted one full bottle of alcohol and the effect was him lying on the bed unconscious…
Few minutes after commencement of treatment… He was awake.
Handling children is not beans and this brings me to a very important topic “Kerosene Poisoning”.
Wetyn be Kerosene Poisoning?
I am sure we all know what kerosene is, kerosene poisoning without getting too technical is harm as a result of accidentally drinking kerosene.
Kerosene poisoning is very common, as many homes still make use of kerosene and unfortunately kerosene looks like water and unlike petrol is stored in attractive containers, many times bottled water containers or even soft drink bottles.
It is the commonest form of poison amongst children.
Then?
Usually when it happens parents panic and have to do things.
Some of the things include giving the child palm oil, palm kernel oil, crude oil, olive oil, groundnut oil, or putting their fingers inside the child’s throat.
Why?
They do this to neutralize the kerosene, but most especially so the child can vomit the kerosene gulped.
Facts.
Kerosene is poorly absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and the fear is in the kerosene getting to the lungs and this usually happens when the child vomits.
Medical people call this “aspiration pneumonitis”, which is big grammar for the lung tissue reacting to the kerosene in the lungs.
This reaction can lead to fever, the child being breathless, cough, as well as noisy breathing.
The kerosene can also affect the heart, GIT or even the brain or bone marrow.
What do I do then?
- First don’t panic.
- Secondly don’t allow the enemy to use you.
- Thirdly, do nothing at home, yes including suggestions from neighbours except the neighbour is a qualified doctor.
- Fourthly, halele, go to a hospital, irrespective of the quantity of kerosene swallowed.
In the hospital, the child would be observed, and if needs be a Chest X-ray would be requested and treatment given to the child as needed.
Don’t play a doctor if you are not one, life is not Nollywood.
How do we prevent this?
Let’s call it the 4 As
reduced Accessibility : Hide all kerosene from children. Keep if far from children.
reduced Attractiveness: Don’t store kerosene in attractive containers, and lock the containers properly.
reduced Availability: If you can don’t use kerosene, apart from the issue of poisoning, the issue of burns is a story for another day. Also use only quantities needed.
increased Awareness: Now you have heard tell others.
Again what do I know?
This is the end of my story.
#HearWord #HearWordseries
Medical Republic
Presentations: 58th Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the NMA Rivers State.
The well attended conference which held in the NMA House Port Harcourt, had 3 Scientific sessions as well as Panel discussions.
Presentations which were presented include:
Environment and Health: Confronting Challenges in a Sustainable Way
by
Professor Precious N. Ede
Institute of Geosciences and Space Technology
Rivers State University
Nkpolu-Oroworukwo, Port Harcourt.
Health Care Financing: Confronting Challenges in (Achieving) Universal Health Coverage and Service Delivery
by
Dr. Anikara S. Atamunotoru
Health Financing Specialist, USAID Health Finance & Governance (HFG) Project.
Human Resources For Health: Pillar Of Health Systems Strenghtening
by
Dr Claribel Abam
Pioneer Executive Secretary, R/S Primary Health Care Management Board, 2011-2015
The Keynote address: Health Delivery in Rivers State: A Situational Analysis was presented by Dr Charles Ibiene Tobin-West a renowned Public Health Specialist.
Medical Republic
Abstracts for the NMA Rivers State 58th Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference.
List of Abstracts Accepted for Oral Presentation
| SNO | ABSTRACT No | TITLE | PRESENTER |
| 1 | NMA/ABS/2018/01-OR | Audit of patients aged 60 years and above presenting in a tertiary Hospital in south-south Nigeria | Bell-Gam HI
|
| 2 | NMA/ABS/2018/03-OR | The Cost Effectiveness of Including Hepatitis C Antibody Screening in Routine Antenatal Tests-A Single Centre’s Experience | Dan-Jumbo A |
| 3 | NMA/ABS/2018/08-OR | Endoscopic posterior urethral valve excision using hysteroscopic scissors- Colworths experience. | Ovunda Jack Omodu |
| 4 | NMA/ABS/2018/13-OR | Association between cooking fuels and peak expiratory flow rate among rural women in the Niger-Delta. | Ofori S |
| 5 | NMA/ABS/2018/24-OR | Improving Child Survival in Nigeria And the Revised Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding | Alice Nte |
| 6 | NMA/ABS/2018/25-OR | Prevalence of Gallstone Disease in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Using Ultrasound in Port Harcourt, South-South Nigeria. | UGBOMA E.W |
| 7 | NMA/ABS/2018/28-OR | The Quality of Public Sources of Drinking Water in Oil Bearing Communities in The Niger Delta Region of Nigeria | Omosivie Maduka |
| 8 | NMA/ABS/2018/29-OR | The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes: Its Implications to the Nigerian Medical Association | Alice Nte |
| 9 | NMA/ABS/2018/30-OR | Arthroplasty-The Braithwaite Memorial Specialist Hospital Experience. | Friday Aaron |
The International Code Of Marketing Of Breast milk
Prevalence of Gallstone Disease in Pxs with Type II DM
Improving Child Survival In Nigeria And The Revised
Drinking Water Quality in Niger Delta
AUDIT IN 60YEARS AND ABOVE PPP BELL-GAM & AMADI (4)
The Prevalence of HCV Among pregnant women Oral Presentation
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Silence is not always golden…
Nenye
July 29, 2017 at 12:21 pm
True story
Tamie
July 29, 2017 at 1:25 pm
Hahahaha
Sad reality.
We have a short way to go.
Amede
July 30, 2017 at 6:07 pm
Mtchewwwwe
After narrating my experiences, only 3 out of countless ones to a former commissioner for health, he asked me, whose story is this again, and I replied, mine
He was speechless
What I termed serious ordeals was because I am in the system
Imagine those who are just simply patients and patient relative
A few days ago, bcoz of nhis, I lost my control and threatened to slap the hell out of a staff
You won’t understand the meaning of desperation until someone tells you at 1am in the morning there is no bronchodilator in the hospital or you need to sign a form to do FBc and no staff to sign it and your sample is just staring at you
Just maybe, there should be a law forbidding political office holders leaving the country for their health needs
They should come and be bitten by mosquitoes and their relatives should sleep on the floor outside the hospital and their samples will get missing in the lab and of course their folders will disappear from records when they come for check up
God Bless the writer!
Aniekeme Obobikpe
July 30, 2017 at 10:42 pm
Wow am thanking God for divine health right now, ve never experienced this but dts bcos ‘ve never been hospitalized. Weldone sir, I hope our gov’t look into the health sector
Kovie
July 31, 2017 at 3:49 pm
The struggle is real. Sometimes I don’t blame our people for not seeking medical attention for their condition early. Even I don’t do that because of the situation in our public hospitals. And I’m a doctor.