All Pharmaceutical Staff in the General Hospital, Ekpan, are to be redeployed over repeated cases of irregularities.
Commissioner for Health, Dr Joseph Otumara, handed down the instruction to the management of the State Hospitals Management Board (HBM), when he paid an unscheduled visit to the hospital.
Dr. Otumara, during inspection of activities at both the children’s and maternity wards of the hospital saw patients with different prescription notes to buy drugs outside and wondered why after several warnings on out-of-stock pretext, the pharmacists still refused to heed his instruction to avoid allowing their drugs to get exhausted before making requisitions.
The commissioner also directed the Medical Director in charge of the hospital to do proper supervision of activities of media and health staff or be shown the way out, saying that he should endeavour to report all alleged cases of threats on him by staff to the appropriate quarters for investigations and possible sanctions.
He equally advised doctors against indiscriminate disregard for the prescription guidelines for the free maternal and under-five programmes of the State Government, saying that it would give the misimpression that the programmes are not free, vowing that his Office would not relent in fighting those who are bent on sabotaging the programmes.
The situation was not different at the Central Hospital in Ughelli where the commissioner, accompanied by the Special Adviser on Health Monitoring, Dr Rukevwe Ugwumba, Permanent Secretaries in both the Ministry of Health and Hospital Management Boards Doctors Daniel Omodon and Caroline Ajuya respectively, defied the heavy downpour to inspect the various wards and units in the hospital.
In response to questions from journalist, Dr Otumara said good discretion was put in practice when the patients at the maternity ward in the Central Hospital Ughelli were relocated to a new place after cracks were noticed in the old ward which was built about 60 years ago.
In the Central Hospital, Warri where the commissioner earlier paid an unscheduled visit also, he said the nearness of the hospital to the river and the nature of the soil accounted for the flooding the complex is facing, assuring that arrangements were on to engage foreign experts to give a lasting solution to the problem.
He said that the electricity problem in the hospital is a nationwide issue, even as he said that the three major plants and several generating sets had helped to check incessant power outages from the public power supply, saying that the State government spends an average of one million naira monthly to provide diesel for the plants.
The Commissioner said that as part of measure to cut off delays in restoring power at the Intensive Care Unit of the Children’s ward in the Central Hospital, Warri, an inverter would be procured and installed in due course.
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