KEY POINTS

• UCH patients protest over 17- day power cut disrupts health delivery especially critical patient care.
• Blackout will prevent operations, diagnostic imaging and treatments to patients.
• This is because, facing the organization with a new difficult challenge of having to spend N80 million monthly on electricity bill.

The patients through their relatives demanded that immediate attention should be given to restore electricity and water supply at the University College Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, Oyo State after power was out for 17 days.

Because of the blackout precipitated by unpaid bills, key operations in health facilities such as surgery and diagnosis have been impossible, prompting anger from patients and their kin.

Services affecting important health changes

With some patients clinical requirements ranging from oxygen support, renal replacement, mechanical ventilation and other life sustaining interventions, power cut by the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company has adversely affected the ability of UCH to respond.

It includes delayed operations, missed surgeries, and other consummatory pressures on people with critical health conditions.

The protesters have filmed different incident and uploaded them on social media while chanting to the management of the hospital to address the issue and supply power.

Hospital’s financial responsibility and action

According to the UCH management, the hospital operates under the “Band A” electricity tariff that costs the management N80 million per month.

This financial pressure has been instrumental in the delay and has made patients as well as healthcare providers put up in very helpless conditions.

The experience of UCH draws attention to problems that affect most public hospitals in Nigeria struggling to deliver important services while grappling with escalating costs.

This is specifically because protesters are asking for a quick outcome so that patients can get the care they deserve.