Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State has decried the current condition of the Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH), Sagamu, which he said was left to become “worse than deplorable” by the previous administration
Abiodun, who was on an inspection visit to the state teaching hospital on Sunday, said the buildings and facilities in the hospital were substandard.
The governor said, “This hospital at a point in time was one of the best university teaching hospitals in this country and its Faculty of Medicine was number one in the country, but today we have lost the reputation.
“This visit was informed by my meeting with sector heads in the Ministry of Health like the Permanent Secretary, medical directors of different hospitals and the members of the management board.”
He lamented that OOUTH, which was once the first and only teaching hospital in the state, has now become ruins.
The governor said, “I thought I should come here to see things for myself. This place is substandard, I am going to sit down and look at how best this place would start working perfectly.
“It is worse than deplorable and I intend to immediately put together a team of consultants and members of the sector after I get a formal report from the medical director and his team.
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“I would set up a team to immediately begin how to look at the approach that would make this place functional as it should be.”
Speaking on the situation at the hospital, the Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee to the OOUTH, Dr Oluwabunmi Fatungbase, said the hospital lacked adequate medical personnel and was also contending with inadequate bed space.
Fatungbase added, “The medical facility started years back as a general hospital and we had probably about 100 bed-spaces at that time, but when we started the teaching hospital, our facility was expanded and we have about 310 bed-spaces now.
“You cannot imagine having a health facility with between 100 and 300 bed-spaces. It is overused and exhausted. We have contracted space, we need to expand, and we need more equipment to treat patients.
“Our inpatients are between 7,000 and 8,000 but the same number of personnel that have been managing the old 100 bed-spaces are the same ones we have.
“We need more personnel. We need more infrastructure and more equipment to work with to be able to serve the Ogun State citizenry better.”