Udom Emmanuel charges health workers to improve attitude towards patients

Udom Emmanuel, governor of Akwa Ibom, has appealed to doctors to check the manner in which healthcare workers attend to patients.

Speaking while playing host to a delegation of the Akwa Ibom Chapter of Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) at Government House, Uyo, the governor said he had received a lot of complaints on this issue.

He urged the new executives to use their positions to support the state government’s drive towards a holistic development of the healthcare sector, by liaising with the various sister bodies to ensure best practices in by practitioners in the sub-sectors.

“Please let’s look at medical profession as a total approach… As NMA, you should have a way of controlling other ancillary services. Where I am suffering very much now, as a governor, is bedside manners with recovering patients,” he said.

“When you finish as the Doctor, it is not all over. The recovery of that patient at times is as serious as what you did, especially in the theatre. You only go on ward rounds, may be in the morning or evening, you don’t know what happens to those people, but I’m getting a whole lot of reports of terrible bedside manners of nurses and other medical workers. Where I’m also having a whole lot of issues is all these labs being set up and we are going to clampdown on them very soon.”

The governor said Jubilee Syringe Factory in the state is set to expand its scope of production to cover varieties of medical consumables.

Affirming his administration’s resolve to ensure a holistic approach in consolidating the state’s healthcare sector, Emmanuel said the Jubilee Syringe Factory, beyond its reputation of largest syringe production capacity in Africa, will soon venture into production of all plastic medical consumables.

He assured the delegation that the state-of-the-art Akwa Ibom State University Teaching Hospital, AKSUTH, which is underway, will be a model tertiary hospital.

“Not just the syringe, we are starting other consumables; everything plastic consumable in the medical line, like all those gloves,” he said.

“We need a lot of your support in setting up our Teaching Hospital and we really mean business about that. As a state, we are doing well in secondary healthcare system. We jumped to establish a quaternary hospital. The next level is to set up a very good tertiary hospital.

“When we run that one well, well equipped, it will give birth to a College of Medicine. With what we have in mind and what we are going to bring in, we will have the best Teaching Hospital owned by a state government.”

He said with AKSUTH, the state was set to bridge the gap between the already existing ultra-modern secondary and quaternary medical facilities in the state.

While reaffirming his administration’s resolve to maintain the status quo of the health workers in the state being the highest paid nationwide.

Emmanuel commended the sacrifice of medical practitioners in the state government in the fight against COVID-19 and congratulated the new NMA leadership in the state on its emergence.

Speaking earlier, the leader of the delegation and Chairman Akwa Ibom State chapter of the NMA, Ime Udoh, thanked the governor.

He said he is the first governor to grant the association audience in the state and lauded his administration’s “passionate” attention to healthcare.

Udoh used the opportunity of the visit to inform the Governor of the 2021 Physicians Week, scheduled to hold in the state in October.