The Nation Newspaper

Tag: FETHI

  • Ekiti lawmaker shot by unknown gunmen

    A member of Ekiti State House of Assembly, Mr. Michael Adedeji, is now battling between life and death after being shot in the head by unknown gunmen.

    Adedeji was waylaid in the early hours of Friday while traveling along Ikere-Akure Road by the gunmen who opened fire as he made an attempt to escape from the scene.

    The lawmaker who represents Ekiti Southwest Constituency 2 was rushed to the Accident and Emergency Unit of Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH) for intensive care.

    He was later referred to Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti (FETHI) where is he is expected to undergo neurosurgery in a bid to save his
    life.

    When our reporter visited EKSUTH to confirm Adedeji’s admission at the Accident and Emergency Unit, a staff member said: “He had been transferred to Ido Ekiti. The bullets hit him in the head and he would have to undergo neurosurgery as soon as possible”.

    But the Ekiti Assembly Deputy Speaker, Mr. Segun Adewumi, described the attack on Adedeji as unfortunate.

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    Adewumi in a telephone chat disclosed that his colleague has been taken to FETHI, where he would have access to CT scanning of his head.

    Adewumi said: “When he was accosted on the way, the lawmaker wanted to flee the scene by putting his car on reverse gear to another direction, but these evil men opened fire on his vehicle and the bullets hit him on the head.

    “He was immediately taken to hospital in Ado Ekiti where he received emergency treatment.”

    Police spokesman, Mr. Caleb Ikechukwu, said the incident has not been brought to his notice.

    Ikechukwu said: “We have not been officially briefed but when we have the information, we shall act appropriately.”

  • Health insurance scheme for Ekiti communities

    In a bid to ensure that every Nigerian has access to quality health care services, the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti (FETHI), is to begin a robust community-based health insurance scheme (CBHIS) in three communities in Ekiti State.

    The Chief Medical Director of the tertiary health institution, Dr. Kunle Ajayi, said the scheme would complement the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) that covers only 1.5 per cent of the 174 million people in the country drawn majorly from the formal sector of the economy.

    Ajayi, who spoke at a workshop to commemorate this year’s edition of the World Health Day, said the towns that will be used as pilots will be unveiled soon.

    At the workshop, the trio of Mr. Kayode Ogundola, Dr. Oluwaserimi Ajetomobi and Dr Charles Olomofe delivered their lectures on “Universal Health Coverage: Everyone, Everywhere’.

    While Mr. Uche Asiegbu from Customer Care Unit of the Federal Ministry of Health spoke on “Servicom Issues: Need for Improvement”.

    The CMD regretted that only a small fraction of the country’s population were covered by NHIS owing to the fact that many states have not keyed into the programme, saying the CBHIS would widen the scope and make Nigerians to live in good health.

    “The issue of health care is very crucial to the government of President Muhammadu Buhari. That was why this government has been improving facilities of health institutions and giving incentives to our medical personnel to checkmate brain drain.

    “Some states have not helped in making the NHIS to touch large majority of Nigerians because they have not keyed into it. Majorly, the scheme was efficient in the formal sector, leaving behind the private and informal sectors to suffer.

    “In a state such as Ekiti, the NHIS legal framework is in the House of Assembly, while some states didn’t even think about it at all.

    “We have done our work very well and the feasibility studies of why the CBHIS failed in the past. We have reached out to philanthropists in Ekiti to fund the scheme for the poor traders, artisans and others who can’t afford it, so that everybody can have improved access to health care services.

    “When everybody is covered, the mortality rate will reduce and the life expectancy of our citizens will increase”, he said.

    In his presentation, Dr Ajetomobi said the universal health coverage was a critical aspect of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the Federal Government, which he said must be effective to ensure equity in health care services.

    She said: “Nigeria has about 34,000 health facilities which can be deployed to enhance universal health coverage. But the skewed distribution of health personnel and lack of sensitisation has made the NHIS ineffective and the limited scope it covered also discouraged the people.

    “Under normal circumstances, those who have enrolled into the scheme must enjoy the preventive, promotive, palliative, curative and rehabilitative aspects of health care for him to be satisfactorily taken care of apart from the fact that the services must be accessible and should not bring any financial hardship to them.”

    A health insurance expert, Ogundola advised that for any insurance scheme to be effective in the country governments must remove the administrative and bureaucratic bottlenecks as well build the confidence of Nigerians in such policy by reducing its cost.

    He debunked the insinuation that the insurance scheme doesn’t cover the treatment of chronic disease such as cancer.

    A customer care officer from the Federal Ministry of Health, Mr. Asiegbu, said the Federal Government established the Servicom to protect patients who were being shortchanged by medical personnel by way of reducing accessibility to good services.

    He urged those who have registered to always report any noticeable sharp practices to the unit for prompt action.

  • FETHI toeing path of Buhari’s change mantra, says CMD

    The new Chief Medical Director (CMD) of Federal Teaching Hospital at Ido Ekiti (FETHI), Dr Kunle Ajayi, has said the hospital is taking a cue from President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s change mantra for effective service delivery.

    Ajayi said FETHI was keying into the President’s change mantra, which had translated to development.

    He added: “What change means to me is that we were somewhere before. We have looked at the way we were, what we were doing and the result that we have achieved and we find out that there should be a new way we can do it to get a new result.”

    The new CMD, who addressed reporters at Ido Ekiti, noted that the new FETHI management discovered that managing people in the hospital had issues and that this was the causes of the crises.

    According to him, his administration is posed to change the narrative in the health facility, which had always been dogged by unrests and frictions between unions and management through effective management of workers and patients.

    To redress the trend, Ajayi said: “We want to have a change in terms of how we manage workers and the unions. We want to have a change in terms of how we manage our patients so that we have positive impression about the hospital.”

    The new CMD said the hospital was prioritising workers’ competence, the work environment and upgrade of equipment to ensure effective service delivery.

    He said the hospital was making efforts to deliver on its core mandates of giving quality health services to the people, reducing mortality and morbidity rates, making health facility affordable and ensuring that patients are satisfied.

    Ajayi said: “We are looking at ways we can upgrade competence among all cadres of our workers – doctors, pharmacists, nurses, technologists and everybody. Competence upgrade is an important aspect of human resource management to provide quality health services to the people.

    “We are trying to ensure that the job environment is conducive. There is no way you talk about peace and productivity in a work environment that is not conducive. We are making the work environment conducive and bridging of information gap between management and workers. The workers have become the focus of the change we want to make, giving the workers the opportunity to relax and offer feedback.”

  • FETHI workers blast CMD over comments

    FETHI workers blast CMD over comments

    The Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido-Ekiti (FETHI), Dr. Lawrence Majekodunmi Ayodele, is under fire over his claim that three doctors from the institution who died alongside their colleagues last week did not get permission to travel.

    Ayodele who spoke in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital on Monday, absolved himself from complicity in the death and accused the hospital workers of hiding under the incident to make the institution ungovernable for him.

    He alleged that the workers’ action against him was politically motivated and targeted to prevent him from securing another second term

    The staff had earlier staged a protest on April 25, accusing the CMD of carrying out nocturnal rituals in the hospital which they claim could have caused the death of the doctors on their way to the NMA Annual Delegates Meeting in Sokoto.

    But the CMD’s comments that the trio did not get official permission to travel for the conference sparked another protest at the hospital yesterday as placard-carrying workers, including medical doctors, called for his sack.

    Yesterday’s protest was spearheaded by the FETHI chapter of the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) and Senior Staff Association (SSA), among others. Some of their placards read: “Ayodele must go!”; “Our CMD is too corrupt”;”Buhari sack Ayodele now”, among others.

    The unions in a communiqué before the protest passed a vote of no confidence on Ayodele, accusing him of insensitivity in showing grief on the death of the doctors and failing to send condolence letters to the families.

    The unions also accused Ayodele of allegedly politicising the situation and mocking the dead just to secure his second term ambition. They said the comments of the CMD assaulted their sensibilities.