In the face of daunting challenges bedevilling the health sector, the Medical Director, Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Abuja, Prof Saad Ahmed has led exceptionally within 2 years in office.
The multiple award-winning medical expert and academia who assumed office in February 2020, has beat the expectations of Nigerians with his transformation of FMC Abuja into a world-class health faculty, focusing key attention on patient care, infrastructure, equipment, staff welfare, affordable service delivery among other critical aspects of tertiary healthcare service delivery.
In an interview with newsmen, at Federal Medical Centre Abuja, to mark his 2 years in office as the Chief Medical Director/CEO of the Medical Centre, Prof Ahmed said that his major strides have on aligning the staff of the FMC with his leadership strategies
“Within the last two years, I can say that one of the major strides in getting the support of the members of staff to key into the vision that we came with, which we have been able to achieve. And quite a lot of progress has been made in this regard.
“Firstly, we had to do a wide consultation with both the staff and also other stakeholders. Secondly, a strategic plan was drafted which started from the unit level to the departments, up to the top level of management and that we have been able to put together so that it will guide what we do,” the MD, Prof Ahmed said.
He said that his administration noticed that there were lots of indigent patients and the health insurance has not covered some of their basic needs, but more of those in the formal sector. “We needed to have indigent funds and then some group of individuals from the community were able to fund that, so we supported them to drive the indigent form so that if you have patients that cannot afford some services, we should be able to get some funds to carry on with their needs,” he added
Speaking on infrastructure, he said that his administration harped on the need to increase capacity, given the increase in the number of health clients.
“We noticed that the number of health clients kept increasing and with that, we were able to say we don’t have a dedicated administrative block. As it is, all the officers are staying within the clinical space, so we needed to have an administrative block of which we budgeted, and we have been able to build an administrative block that is almost 90 per cent completed, hoping that by March or April the building should be handed over to us for use.
“After that, we also needed to expand more clinical space, and so we started the construction of the complex; clinical service block, and the ward block extension.
“Now after that, we met with the rotary club, had discussions with them for a counselling centre, which is currently ongoing also. These, among others, are some of the efforts we’ve made.
Recounting several achievements made in the area of equipment, he said, “We were able to bring in lots of equipment. For example, we have the Lung machine and all its accessories. Within the next one week are going to start heart surgery. We equally have a laser machine for laser surgeries. It is something that is state of the art and every surgeon in this country wants to come and have a feel.
“Apart from that, we have equipment for different surgeries. We have equipped our radiology department with a state of the art digital x-ray machine which comes along with fluoroscopy. Usually, they come separately but we were able to get that too and currently, it has been installed and would be put to use.
“We have constructed and equipped a 10 bed ICU. We have an isolation centre which is a negative pressure facility, donated by the US government. And we further went ahead to equip the isolation centre appropriately.
“There is a state of the art molecular laboratory that should be able to diagnose most of the diseases, particularly the infectious diseases; the Covid, Hepatitis B and C and so on.
“All of these and more, we were able to achieve within the 2 years.
He further stated the various achievements the FMC has recorded in the areas of staff strength. “We were also able to train and retrain our staff and in that regard, we were able to get accreditation for postgraduate medical training for so many of our clinical departments; from family medicine to surgeries, to internal medicine, radiology and so on so when they finish, they’ll become consultants.
“Before now, there was no training for house officers and interns, but we were able to get accreditation, we started taking house officers and also interns in radiology, pharmacy, physiotherapy, medical lab science and so on.
“In all of these, we are expanding because we believe that as a tertiary centre, we must invest in training because that training is going to drive quality service delivery and also ensure that the staff update their knowledge to give some more to the trainees. So far, this is where we are.
“All of these and more, we were able to achieve within the 2 years.”
He however noted that funding has posed major challenges.“The challenge, mostly, is that of funding. But I enjoy the support of my management team and also the staff of this institution because they make it quite easy because when we have challenges we sit down to put our heads together and for some of these projects I mentioned to you, we had collaborations with other organisations, some, the ideas came from members of staff, or the management, but funding is a major challenge.
“I commend the government because in the health sector, be that as it may, the year 2020 and 2021; the capital budgets have been released 100% and we believe that if there is increased funding and the release continues to be 100% the way it is, there will be a revolution in the health sector, not just FMC Abuja.
On improvement of the existing achievements, he said that every effort that has been put in is geared towards excellent patient care service. This he said, is the drive of the FMC under his leadership, hence the training and retraining of staff to ensure good use of the equipment available.
“Recently we were able to recruit quite a number of staff which I believe, will reduce the pressure on some of those staff, but it is still not enough and since it is a continuous thing, we will keep improving on the number to reach an optimum level,” he said.
He expressed gratitude to God for the opportunity to serve and also the federal government for appointing him to lead the institution. He appreciated the staff of the FMC for the support and cooperation so far and assured continued improvement in the area of their welfare.
