Maiduguri flooding: We’ve suspended admission of patients – UMTH CMD

By Mohammed Kaka

The Chief Medical Director of University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), Professor Ahmed Ahidjo has disclosed that the recent flooding disaster in the state which submerged the entire ground floor of the hospital with water has forced them to halt admission of new patients.

Ahidjo who stated this in a chat with Aljazeera as monitored by our Correspondent yesterday, said the extent of damage done to the hospital by the flood would be difficult to ascertained at the time of the interview.

“At this point it’s going to be very difficult to categorically state the extend of the damage”, he said.

The CMD who disclosed that he has been in the hospital for the last 37 years but have not seen such a disaster, stressed that the hospital is the largest hospital in the whole of west Africa with about 1,305 bed capacity.

According to him, “the whole of the ground floor of the hospital and the centres, we have about fourteen specialized centers of excellence in the hospital, they are all flooded and some of the machines they are very expensive”.

Professor Ahidjo, added that, “we know in the medical field the cancer machines are extremely expensive, Radiology department are very expensive, the laboratories are very expensive, the machines at the kidney centre are very expensive, all these machines are submerged in water”.

He said as a result of the situation, the hospital is for the time being only carrying out emergency operations.

“We have suspended admission because of fear of contermination, we fear that patients may get hospital acquired infections and other forms because the whole of the sewage of the hospital has defaulted and there is a mixing of these fluids in the hospital premises”, he said.

Professor Ahidjo noted that even the cancer center, the hospital is not sure about nuclear contermination as the system uses radium and cobalt system, thereby, making it difficult for the hospital to handle new patients now.

“We are just managing the patients on admission, we have to give them the basic support, we have moved all of them upstairs”, he said.

The CMD further explained another challenge confronting the hospital is that the oxygen plant of the hospital is also flooded which makes all emergencies to become very difficult.

He said: “we have to off the electricity supply, and the water supply cannot be obtained without electricity, we off the electricity supply for fear that patients and people getting into the hospital may get electrocuted if electricity go into water”.

“What we are doing now is to ensure that the water has stopped coming into the hospital, then we clean outside of the hospital and then we move into cleaning the premises and the inside of the building, then to restore electricity before we restore water supply to the patients. That’s the emergency thing that we are doing now”, the CMD disclosed.