Patients groan as ATBUTH resident doctors down-tools

Activities at the Abubakar Tafawabalewa Teaching Hospital ATBUTH have been crippled as resident doctors of the hospital join their counterparts nationwide to embark on an industrial strike.

The Chief Medical Director of ATBUTH, Dr. Mohammed Alkali, said that the hospital has clearly notified the regular resident doctors and the locum doctors that by virtue of their appointments, they are not supposed to be a part of the strike.

“I have received information that the locum have withdrawn from the strike. In the meantime, our consultants are also on ground to assist in attending to patients and the locum doctors are also around now to render services to patients,” he said.

When our correspondent visited the hospital, Patients receiving treatment were at the receiving end as they continue to lament following the unavailability of doctors to attain to their health challenges.

Daily times reports that some patients openly cried out that they are suffering as a result of the strike by the resident doctors, pleading with them to suspend the strike and attain to their health complains.

One of the patients, Lance Corporal Yunusa Yusuf, a soldier who was injured during an exercise and now on a wheel chair, said that he has been there since morning without being attended to.

Yusuf, who spoke to Daily Times outside the Surgical Ward of the Teaching Hospital, said he was serving with the 313 Artillery Air Defence, Minna, where he sustained a neck fracture during bush exercise along Jos road in Bauchi, added that he has been receiving treatment at ATBUTH without any problem until now when the strike action began.

“I am here with my son and my younger brother since 7 o’clock this morning.

“I have spent N1,500 buying one form of drug or the other and they are saying no doctors (could attend to me) because they (the doctors) are on strike. I am suffering.

“I have not eaten since money. God will punish these doctors for subjecting us to this kind of suffering.

“As I am here over 40 patients have come and gone without being attended to. How can I go home like this? They want me to die.”

Rukaiya Ibrahim, whose three year old son, Yakubu had pneumonia, said: “Please my son should not die. They carried out a surgery on him two weeks ago and today he has been abandoned. He has been crying since morning and yet there is no doctor to attend to him”

However, some of the pediatric nurses told our correspondent that Rukaiya had nothing to worry about as nurses were attending to Yakubu and all the children admitted in the ward, and that the boy would be fine.

At the delivery suit, the complaint was the same: no doctors to attend to patients.

Hajara Markus, whose younger sister, Martina Timothy, was rushed to the hospital, said apart from midwives, there was no single doctor to attend to the Martina.

“We rushed her here this morning because her legs were swollen and she was having serious pains. Since morning, this is past 3; 00, no doctor has attended to her.

A check round wards and other parts of the hospital indicated that activities were at its lowest with few vehicular and human activities in the hospital at the time of filing this report.

Daily Times gathered that emergency cases were not attended to as most of the victims were either turndown, treated quickly or referred to other places for attention.

Samuel Luka, Bauchi