The Chief Medical Director, CMD, Federal Medical Center, FMC, Makurdi, Benue State, Prof Joseph Kortor, has said the hospital remains the least developed in Nigeria despite being among the first to be established in the country.CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
He further stated that the hospital can hardly compete with other sister FMCs in the country due to its bad state of infrastructure, stressing that the center is not looking like a hospital where serious services can be rendered.
Kortor disclosed this during a chat with newsmen in his office in Makurdi.
He noted that while a lot of achievements were being recorded in other FMCs in the country, the Makurdi center had remained underdeveloped for decades.
He said: “Go to FMCs in Jabi, Lagos, Abeokuta, etc., a lot of achievements are being done there. I can’t even bring my colleagues here (Makurdi) to come and see what is happening here in Benue; no way, because there is nothing here to be proud of
“You bring people to your house when you build a new house, or your house looks fine and you want your visitors to see. But when everything in your house is upside down, what actually are you going to show them? Is there anything special that you want people all over the country to come and see?
“We belong to a committee of CMDs, where we go round the states to discuss FMCs, whereby if you have any problem or issue, you discuss with your older colleagues who advise you. Last year, we were supposed to be in Maiduguri, but because of insecurity in the area, we brought it to Abuja and by March 2025, we will be in another state. But because of the poor condition of FMC Makurdi, I cannot bring anybody here.
“We have no functional power plants to work with here. You can see how you (journalists) are sweating profusely due to heat in my office. It is about budget padding, and I do not have the capacity for such.
“When I was coming to assume office here, I came with a vision to turn around the hospital in line with the vision of the hospital to provide an effective and efficient foremost hospital in the area of research and training. As it is, not much is done yet. I have spent one year, but we are still crawling,” Prof. Kortor stated.
He maintained that despite the unfavorable condition of the hospital, he has been able to put one or two things in place
The CMD added that he has succeeded in relocating all the hospital services to its permanent site in Apir, except for the children and female wards that are still rendering services at the temporary site.
He said the hospital under his watch has successfully established a monocular laboratory for HIV testing and treatment and set up a Lassa fever laboratory unit
“We have commissioned the monocular HIV laboratory. Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has also upgraded our lab. Now we can successfully take samples of Lassa fever patients for lab tests and confirm the result here in Makurdi without taking the sample outside the state.
“Just recently, we confirmed Lassa fever in a case when the disease broke out in one of the Idoma-speaking areas of the state.
“Our major challenge now is electricity and power supply. We don’t have lights to run many samples. For instance, for you to test a sample and confirm the result, you need four to five hours of uninterrupted power. Because if you start the test and power supply goes off, you will have to start all over again,” Prof. Kortor stated.CONTINUE FULL READING>>>>>
Prof. Kortor called on the government to address the issue of power for more quality services in the hospital.
