New Board stems patient drift from Lagos Hospitals

Dayo Adejobi
There is no doubt that the high cost of healthcare is a major factor that hinders many citizens in Lagos State from seeking care in Public Health facilities, trends have revealed that the attitude of health staff to work discourages many people from getting services from orthodox health facilities, but the latter would be addressed urgently.
The new Chairman, Health Service Commission Board, Dr .M.o Salako disclosed that reversing this negative attitude of health staff to work is one of the tasks he set for himself during on tenure.
Salako announced this plan during his inauguration as the Chairman of the Board, Health Service Commission Tuesday.
Over the years, the attitude of heath staff workers in Lagos public hospitals has put many people off, resulting in some seeking care in private facilities, traditional and herbal healing homes while others abandon the public hospitals altogether.
Such attitude include lackadaisical attitude to work, coming late to work, absenteeism, poor human relations, lack of proper communications, lack of empathy for patients ordeal amongst others.
In his acceptance Speech, the new Chairman of the HSC in Lagos State identified some challenges within the system, which the Board would address as: the increasing patients load from daily influx of people into Lagos State, in the face of limited resources.
Chronic manpower shortages in the specialties of anesthesia, radiology, radiography, Ear, Nose and Throat (E.N.T), physical medicine/physiotherapy, and maxillofacial surgery.
He said, the HSC shall work assiduously and within a short period to resolve the improvement in welfare of all public hospital staff, assess performance of health workforce especially on attitude to work and patient centeredness, collaborate with the Ministry of health and other stakeholders in theprimary healthcare to reduce influx of patients to secondary and tertiary health centres and encourage training in rare field such as anesthesia, E.N.T, physiotherapy etc, with the payment of inducement allowance to such healthcare practioners.
Similarly, Dr Salako he would evolve training scheme for medical officers in Family Medicine (General Medical practice) while practicing in their various public hospitals. In addition there will be sustainable staff development programmes with scheduled trainings.