By Hassan Zaggi
The Medical Director, Alliance Hospital, Abuja, Dr. Christopher Otabo, has advocated for what he described as government-private hospitals collaboration for improved healthcare in Nigeria.
Speaking when members of the Association of Nigeria Health Journalists (ANHEJ), paid him a courtesy visit, in Abuja, weekend, he insisted that only collaboration between the government-owned and private hospitals can guarantee adequate healthcare needs of all Nigerians.
He noted that since the ultimate goal of both government and private hospitals is to save lives, there was no need for competition among them.
“Unfortunately over the years, what we find is that the government health institutions seems to be in competition with private sector instead of collaboration and that is injuring the healthcare system,” he said.
While citing instances, Otabo recalled that, up until recently, it was only two months ago that for the first time he saw a letter from National Hospital, Abuja, referring a patient to Consultant or Orthopaedic surgeon in Alliance hospital.
“What used to happen is patient get dissatisfied and leave. The best the doctors could do at that time, will say well, you can go to Alliance Hospital but we cant give you referral because it against their ethics. This is because they see us as competitors rather than collaborators.
“Every week, we received like one or two patients from National Hospital from either a person who got angry and left or the surgeons will say you know what we cant do it, go to Alliance Hospital, that’s a weekly occurrence,” he said
Otabo further said: “Government has shown over the years that they are inefficient in managing resources. Private sector can come with the money in terms of the public-private partnership arrangement.
“Two years ago, I wrote a letter to the Secretary of Health in FCT. I told my partners in China that there is no MRI machine in the whole of the FCT hospitals. Let’s assume there’s no federal presence. The only MRI machine we have is in National Hospital.
“The only other places is Alliance Hospital and of course, we have in a few other private hospitals. Only National Hospital has MRI among like 20 big government hospitals.
“So I wrote to the Commissioner of Health and said let’s go into partnership, I want to supply MRI machine to as many hospitals in FCT as possible.
“That letter did not see the light of the day.
“By now, we should have had like five MRI machines. I’m into business. I get my cut you get yours too and we will run it.
“You don’t even need to pay for maintenance. The maintenance would be on us. You probably take just take 30% for providing the space and providing the patient, the remaining 70% comes to those who funded the machine and those who will be maintaining it. No response up till now and there is still no MRI machine in our hospitals.”
