Health
Special Report: A peep into Ahidjo’s many dreams and visions of making the UMTH biggest hospital in Nigeria (2)
Special Report: A peep into Ahidjo’s many dreams and visions of making the UMTH biggest hospital in Nigeria (2)
By: Bodunrin Kayode
The recent celebration, however, of forty years of the UMTH by Professor Ahidjo and his team was a clear indicator that the facility has come of age and there is a need to begin to plan for the next 40 years. And this must be done by facing obvious embarrassing challenges like hiccups in the electricity supply and the rest. I mean taking each one as it comes. Life in his own specialty, which is interventional radiology, would be miserable without steady electricity and computerization of the entire facility if he finishes his second term. Imagine going back to his office after his second term and having to open the windows for fresh air if the cooling facilities are not working. That is why he is working double hard now to fix the fixable.
After the on-going new structures and electricity supply, the right equipment to last for at least the next decade and up-to-date professionals by way of training and retraining is very paramount.
40 years have passed, and the UMTH is still standing. Serving humanity was pronounced on the day of its ceremonial opening by the late Alhaji Shehu Shagari on July 23, 1983. So many waters have literally passed under the bridge, and so many professionals have passed through the narrow corridors of the hospital and retired. My mind goes to the American-trained Professor Emeritus Babatunji Omotara, who is the father of environmental epidemiology. Many have also left since the insurgency started in 2009, while many others have stayed back.
From the day the government started building a specialist hospital on the site until the day the federal government took over and completed it as a one-stop-shop teaching hospital, it has been of the highest standards expected in a third-world country. The first patient was really admitted on February 18, 1982. Although so much still needs to be done to ensure that the level of dilapidation over the years is reduced to a tolerable level, much is also expected from management about the training of certain scarce personnel as soon as all the structures are completed.
Cancer Centre
Just before Professor Mala Sandabe took over as the CMAC, I had hinted to then-CMAC Professor Bashir on the medical records people relationship with sick patients and thereby redirecting the standards of the hospital. He took note to do something about it, and he really did start by making so many moves to correct the wrongs.
I went on another day this time as a patient for treatment, and I saw the way one of the medical records people was speaking to a pregnant woman upstairs at the Obstetrics and Gynecology (O and G) department. I felt really sad that the medical records staff was doing it as if it were her right to speak as such before patients would conform to her directives, even if she was as illiterate as they always presume. This was because she was obviously untrained, and her manners were normal in a hospital, which should compete with a library for silence. How do you ask a pregnant woman in her third trimester if you were responsible for her pregnancy? Who makes such unguarded statements in a hospital? I ended up in the office of Prof. Sandabe and told him the exact location of where I saw the wrongdoing, and he promised to correct it, and this too was done.
Apart from some of these expected excesses, the hospital has been absorbing so many categories of patients, ranging from cases that should have gone to the primary and secondary hospitals before referrals. But I don’t blame them. Hospitals like Umaru Shehu, where Governor Babagana Zulum has done so much to lift the standard, were before now contributing factors for UMTH to admit patients that should have gone through the primary and secondary hospital before referrals. ‘That is why everyone goes to TH’, as the facility is referred to in Maiduguri. Yet they still tug on like the giants they are in the region, even finding time for certain forms of research, as was mentioned by the CMD during the news conference to herald the flag-off of activities to mark 40 years. Right now, they are looking into the prevalence of kidney challenges in Borno as a whole. And we expect the result to be out very soon.
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Before The unbundling of the single-stop hospital structure.
A lot of history has been recorded during the first tenure of the CMD, but I paid special attention to the old structure built by the COSTAIN construction company, where the late Emeritus Professor Umaru Shehu occupies the second floor like the colossus that he is. He was not my focus when Prof. Ahidjo took over the management of the facility. I actually wanted to see Professor Babatunji Omotara, who is now retired after 40 years of training medical practitioners. So I climbed up the two-story building, sat in his old, moderate office, and we had our first chat on cholera. He responded briskly because the disease was killing lots of people at the Muna garage axis of Maiduguri, and I needed to add the perception of community medicine in my report to sound more professional with my sources. He stood up and asked me to please allow him a minute to ease himself, then returned to our discussion on how to stem the tide of the spread of cholera, which had gone out of hand and was killing people daily.
I expected him to use a private facility just within his office to suit his status as a professor. But he took a bunch of keys and headed to a shared facility outside his office. That, to me, was strange and needed correction. It occurred to me that something really had to be done to make these academics a bit more comfortable than some of them are now. A senior professor of such high status must have his own convenience and kitchenette so that he can function very well without too many distractions. It should not be optional in case he did not demand it. Returning downstairs, I discovered the building was leaking due to heavy rains. It leaked on the ground floor, which used to house the CMD’s before now. Sources allege that the leakage was from a tank upstairs instead. Whatever it was needed correction.
The newly promoted consultants without offices walked on the water into their MDCAN office to hang out while waiting for their calls. It’s obviously an old building, even though it has not yet expired, based on my findings at the works department. But something had to be done to correct so much wear and tear that had occurred over the years because it would surely become obsolete one day and expire. That is when such buildings should be pulled down due to old age if known contemporary technology must be applied. But to preempt that time, one could understand that the CMD, who was born into a family whose father was a builder in Maiduguri, can easily see through these weak structures and is creating a plan B for almost all of them before they hit about 100 years and expire and must go one day.
Many other problems need attention in the hospital. Problems like finance have bedeviled the facility and forced the CMD to begin to hunt for plan B’s and C’s to keep the hospital community going. He actually stressed the issue of finance as a major problem affecting the management of the hospital during a news conference to announce the flag-off of activities for 40 years of the hospital. To Ahidjo, “if finance is settled, we would have cash to do a lot of things, including lighting up the new facilities scattered around the compound.”
Perhaps due to serial disappointments from the Yola electricity company, the CMD has gone beyond the level of complete reliance on diesel for the generation of electricity. Most of the facility has backup electricity due to solar panel supplies, which are relatively cheap due to the abundant sun in the savanna. Whatever foundation was set by the first indigenous CMD, Prof. Suleiman Lagundoye, in 1984–85 needs a lot of fine tuning by the first CMD to think of a futuristic plan to absorb the endless expansion brought about by modern medicine. These new structures have increased the beds in the facility beyond imagination, making it the largest hospital in the country today by way of capacity to admit and treat.
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For the record, the 40-year celebration proper
The celebration proper was quite elaborate. It was handled by a committee that was chaired by Professor Shehu Liberty of the Department of Public Administration, with members like Professor Danjuma Gambo of the Mass Communications Department of the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID).
It started with Friday prayers on the 14th of July and extended to Sunday, July 23rd. A special church program was held on Sunday, July 16th, followed by a press conference held in the conference room of the hospital administration block the following day. Other highlights of the celebration included a walk around the giant old hospital structure led by the CMD and management team and several union leaders, including the association of resident doctors, the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), consultants and their MDCAN colleagues, the nurses, who are the largest union on the ground, and some of the gentlemen of the media. Touching on social responsibilities, a medical and surgical outreach was held in Kaleri and Gwange wards in the city of Maiduguri and a surgical outreach at the new trauma center of the hospital.
There was also a day for career guidance at the Zulum auditorium and conference center for young people. That was followed by two public lectures in the same hall. Former President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, Ayuba Wabba, and former CMD Professor Idris Mohammed gave the anniversary lectures. Wabba wanted unity among all the players in the sector in a long lecture, but that is for another day.
They also had the commissioning of the child and adolescent center and the foundation-laying ceremony of some legacy projects by vice president Kashim Shettima. This was followed by a dinner and award night at the multipurpose hall of the government house in Maiduguri. Several individuals were given special prices for their contributions to making the facility stand to this day, in spite of the lingering torment of the insurgent Boko Haram in their backyard. I would have written a book if I continued the sequence seen over the last four years in this facility. But not to bore my readers, I will be running the highlights of the lectures separately at the fullness of time. Those treaties released by the two lecturers really need special handling, especially that of Comrade Wabba, who called for unity among warring professionals within the health sector.
Special Report: A peep into Ahidjo’s many dreams and visions of making the UMTH biggest hospital in Nigeria (2)
We have the best Opthalmology department in the North East of Nigeria –Prof. Tahir
By: Bodunrin Kayode
Medical Director of the ultra modern Police Hospital Damaturu Prof Bashir Tahir has said that his facility has one of the best Ophthalmology departments in North East Nigeria.
He made this declaration while speaking with this reporter in Damaturu recently.
Professor Tahir stated that having met the facility in a near comatose state, he and his team have been able to create a department of Opthalmology plus six others and set it on a very high standard ready to serve the people in the catchment area.
Tahir who spoke through his Director of Administration Mallam Hamza Saleh stated that “Our Opthalmology dept is one of the best in the North East of Nigeria and you can get a recommended glasses within an hour because of the state of arts machines in that very department in the hospital.”
Speaking on the current expansion going on in the facility the MD stated that “We have ENT and consultants coming from the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital UMTH alternatively during the week to do routine consultations, ward rounds and even operations in the theatre.
“We recently spent about N10m to buy equipments in the ENT and we do hope that all the equipments will be available before the end of the year.
On the revitalization of the facility, he went on: “We actually met the three theatres in bad shape but we have been able to put them into functional use by restructuring them accordingly. For now all three are functioning including the O and G theatre where routine operations have been conducted.
“When we came on board also the hospital was not departmentalized. So we did that and opened the way for more doctors to come by creating these seven departments for them to work in an organized way.
“All the departments are functional with seven consultants who man these departments to the satisfaction of all the patients who visit the facility.
This new facility can also boast of two Eye Nose and Throat surgeons and others as the support staff to support the facility.
“We have about 100 nurses with one that is a police officer. We also have some of them with specialized techniques and that has contributed to the progress of the place.
On medical lab scientists, the MD posited that they now have six lab scientists in different areas, two pharmacists and a couple of technicians that assist them on the ground on a daily basis.
They have a solid Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement with a pharmacy company in the supply of drugs which is used to stabilize the availability of drugs in the hospital.
On supply of drugs, he noted that they make sure that people served well and patient are the priority of anything that happens in the facility adding that they now have satellite pharmacies in the facility to ensure quality time is not wasted.
The MD said that it was part of their plan to get most of the major equipments before any fresh employment of any professional commences so that all hands will be on deck to ensure the best.
We have the best Opthalmology department in the North East of Nigeria –Prof. Tahir
UMTH: Interventional Radiology Centre, a High-tech Medical Solution.
By: Balami Lazarus
After the devastating flood of September 2024, UMTH counted so many losses that ran into billions of naira. Little did the public expect too soon that another gigantic medical center that is not found in other hospitals in Nigeria, but only in Maiduguri, situated and being at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital-Borno State.
The IR Centre, or Interventional Radiology Centre, in the words of the Director of the Centre, Dr. Mohammed Lawan, is a hospital within a hospital, describing the massive building equipped with the latest medical equipment as a center for carrying out radiology services, for training, and for research purposes.
The Chief Medical Director, Professor Ahmed Ahidjo, Midas touch has produced and added medical value to nourish the healthcare delivery services through the new Interventional Radiology Center (IRC). “This center is another medical solution to interventional radiology treatments…. We are proud to have this as a medical facility”.
What is interventional radiology? According to Dr. Mohammed Lawan, who spoke to NEWSng. Interventional Radiology It is a medical specialty that performs various minimally invasive procedures and techniques to treat many medical conditions that once required open surgery. The use of medical imaging guidance through sophisticated and high-tech medical equipment like x-ray fluoroscopy, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, etc., are some major working medical gadgets to qualify interventional radiology. Therefore, the center is meant to offer specialized medical surgery/treatment and healthcare delivery services to patients at UMTH through interventional radiology surgery.
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In furtherance of NEWSng findings, a walk into the center opens up to so many clinics and equipment that draw attention. The center is an imposing building beautifully designed with offices equipped with furniture, medical equipment, and materials of high quality. Ultrasound, computed tomography, and other working tools are used to give it a full certification to be known, called, and addressed as the Interventional Radiology Center of standard offering international best practices.
Prof. Ahidjo told NEWSng that “we are the only ones that see the inside at all times when and where there are medical radiology cases. He further said that the center will also serve as a reference point for radiologists, consultants, doctors, and medical students. “The Interventional Radiology Center is meant to make a difference in providing quality healthcare services in medicine. IRC is my new baby”. e center has male and female wards with what it takes to have in a specialized sentence like IRC of UMTH. To make it easy for those with mobility challenges, the building is designed to ease their movement within the facility. The reception area and the patient’s waiting room, as well as the recovery room, are of worth according to standards obtainable in any medical center or hospital.
When NEWng entered into the building, Dr. Mohammed Lawan was already attending to patients, and this afforded our special team to see things firsthand. This concludes that with the emergence of IRC, UMTH has finally revealed the true medical specialty of Prof. Ahmed Ahidjo to so many people out there who see him like any other professor of medicine. The CMD and/or hospital administrator. “Prof. Ahidjo is a surgeon consultant and interventional radiologist, one of the best brains in this particular field of medicine, within and without,” said one radiologist.
UMTH: Interventional Radiology Centre, a High-tech Medical Solution.
Why UMTH is Nigeria’s leading healthcare institution.
By: Dr. James Bwala
UMTH’s medical professionals and medical breakthroughs in Nigeria Medical institutions around the country should continue to prioritize infrastructure development. UMTH’s commitment to staff training and development was critical to its growth. The hospital invested heavily in ongoing professional development programs, ensuring that its medical staff were not only well-versed in the most recent information and skills used by the hospital, but also had the opportunity to show them. UMTH’s initiatives ensured that its healthcare professionals stayed at the cutting edge of medical advances and practices.
Professor Ahmed Ahidjo’s creative leadership has helped the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) become a renowned healthcare institution in Nigeria. Over the last 40 years, UMTH has experienced substantial modernization and expansion, transitioning from a single-building complex to a multi-institutional system. This expansion included the construction of important facilities such as a 150-bed trauma center and a 1,000-seat theater, which greatly improved the hospital’s ability to provide outstanding medical services. By deliberately extending its facilities, UMTH has established itself as a key healthcare provider not only in northeastern Nigeria but throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
Furthermore, the hospital’s expansion reflects broader trends in Nigerian healthcare systems, which attempt to improve service delivery in the face of numerous problems. While many tertiary hospitals confront challenges such as insufficient medical equipment and staff training, UMTH’s proactive approach has enabled it to successfully manage these difficulties. As it continues to adapt and innovate in the healthcare industry, UMTH demonstrates how strategic planning may result in significant improvements in patient care.
Under Professor Ahmed Ahidjo’s guidance, UMTH developed its physical infrastructure while also investing in innovative medical technologies and thorough staff training programs to improve service delivery. This strategy not only increased the hospital’s operational efficiency, but it also drew a cadre of highly competent medical staff committed to sustaining high standards of care.
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These strategic developments, together with a dedication to excellence, have established UMTH as a leader in healthcare innovation and quality in the Northeast. Furthermore, the creation of specialist centers, including the 150-bed trauma center and renovated auxiliary facilities, has substantially improved UMTH’s ability to handle difficult medical cases, confirming its image as Nigeria’s preeminent healthcare institution. Furthermore, the hospital’s dedication to research and partnership with international medical institutes has created a culture of continual learning and innovation.
UMTH’s dedication to both patient care and academic quality has established a standard for other institutions in the region, maintaining its position as a healthcare leader. Under the innovative leadership of Professor Ahmed Ahidjo, UMTH has increased its facilities and services, most notably with the installation of a Child Institute, Cancer Centre, Burns Centre, a 150-bed trauma center, and a 1000-seat auditorium, amongst others, which have been important in improving its capacity to deliver.
Strategic connections with international institutions have not only fostered information exchange but also brought cutting-edge medical technology to the hospital’s doorstep. This technological breakthrough has not only increased diagnosis and treatment capacities but has also established UMTH as a top choice for medical education and research. Leveraging these improvements, UMTH has also prioritized healthcare professional training, ensuring that both current and new hires are skilled in using cutting-edge technology to offer excellent patient care.
The emphasis on continuing professional development has kept UMTH’s healthcare professionals at the forefront of medical developments, ensuring high levels of patient care and safety. Furthermore, the hospital’s concentration on research and development has resulted in ground-breaking studies that have greatly advanced medical knowledge, cementing its position as Nigeria’s preeminent healthcare facility.
This dedication to quality is also evident in the hospital’s patient satisfaction rates, which have regularly exceeded national averages, demonstrating the efficacy of its comprehensive approach to treatment. UMTH’s ability to provide great healthcare is enhanced by its strong infrastructure and an innovative culture that pervades all aspects of its operations.
Dr. James Bwala, PhD, writes from Abuja.
Why UMTH is Nigeria’s leading healthcare institution.
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