by Abdulbaki Halliru Bashir,
Sir, I am writing to draw your attention to the state of hospitals in Kano under your administration, especially the issue of shortage of staff which is crippling health care delivery.
I will like to start by commending your spirit of continuity which is not usually seen in contemporary politics and also to congratulate you on the Successful completion of the two hospitals started by Shekarau’s administration and equipping them with state of the art facilities; specially the installation of MRI machine in one of the hospitals which not even all teaching hospitals could afford. This is quite commendable, unprecedented and meritorious achievement.
Sir, the existing hospitals in the state are having serious shortage of manpower which will definitely scuttle your effort in fulfilling your promise to the masses of Kano of delivering better health care services. Patients are being kept for long and not well attended to and the health professionals are being over worked which adversely affect their mood and decision making skills. This is evident by the fact that in most of the cases the first and last contact in the major hospitals are house officers and interns that are on training and suppose to practice under supervision. Some hospitals in the state like Muhammad Abdullahi Wase Hospital employs locum tenens like doctors, nurses and physiotherapist to temporarily supplement the shortage and ensure quality service delivery. This happened only in hospital that has enough internally generated revenue to do that.
Sir, this resulted from failure of your administration to employ additional health professionals. I learnt that since your inauguration only one mass interview was conducted at hospitals management board (HMB) which was about a year ago. Some months back commissioner of health announced plan of your government to employ 250 staff, but up to date, it is just news.
Currently, there are hundreds of health professionals who are indigenes of Kano state that finished their National youth service and applied for employment at HMB for almost a year now but were not called for an interview. These professionals that included doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, lab scientists and others are patiently waiting for a year now and ready to offer their services to the mass populace of Kano. This long drought in the employment of new health professionals in Kano state is an unfortunate development that is happening only under your watch. During the past two administrations, interviews are conducted at HMB every Thursdays or every two weeks despite the economic crunch. Sir, health professionals from all the north western states are engaged right from school, I don’t know why Kano being the most economically stable and populous state could not do that.
Sir, my plea here is that, as you made an unprecedented success of building new hospitals and procuring CT scan and MRI machine in the state, you should also avoid unprecedented unfortunate development of not employing enough health professionals to care for the teeming Kano populace that voted you into office.
Lastly, I want my elected governor to avoid boasting on meager achievements; I recently learnt that some newly graduated doctors are contracted by HMB for their one year internship training and given photocopies of their appointment letters instead of the originals. Some reports were saying the original will be given to them at a ceremonial gathering to be covered by media for political propaganda. The training of newly graduated health professionals mandated to undergo internship training is a recurrent process; thousands have been trained by HMB in the previous governments at regular intervals.
Sir, I would like to give specific details and examples of the issues raised here and other matters concerning health sectors in my subsequent letter, and also the politics associated with civil service commission overseeing employment at HMB.
