A Nigerian medical doctor, Baridueh Badon, practicing in Germany has taken to X to lament over the poor quality of service at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, where he also once worked before travelling abroad.
According to Badon, the staff there demonstrated extreme negligence that ultimately led him to take his mother to a private hospital for the required surgery before returning her to UPTH for convalescence.
He wrote:
“My mum was admitted in the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital for 6 months. It was one of the worst healthcare service I had seen in my life.
I actually did my house job in the same hospital 12 years ago.
The first shock was compulsory feeding. Every patient is forced to eat hospital food (picture attached). You can’t opt out of it. This food is worse than what people in prison eat. The cost was 2,000 per day. I could not understand why a hospital will force patients to eat their food.
The workforce is overstretched. In some cases, patient relatives are the ones giving IV fluids and drugs… I mean IV drugs oh!!
I had connections, and with all my network, things were still very difficult. We had to keep begging teams to review.
Her surgery was cancelled 4 times.
First, Registrar didn’t check she was on a medication she didn’t need to before surgery. It was found out in the morning of the surgery date.
The second was cancelled because a nurse told her to eat food on the morning of the operation.
Third was cancelled because, when they wheeled her to the theatre, NEPA took light.
The fourth was cancelled because all the medical team members were going to a conference.
I had to take my mum to a private hospital, got the surgery done, and brought her back to UPTH.
If I faced all these, spent over N6m with all my doctor friends and connections. Imagine what the common patient is going through.
During my time, the numbers of mosquitos in that place can carry you to theatre. Very soon, snakes and rabbits will set IV lines as the height of grass everywhere is alarming.
We can do better!!
