Chief Medical Director
Dr Roy Maduka is the Chief Medical Director at the Central Hospital Agbor. A seasoned physician who over the years has sought for the development of the hospital and just recently, achieved the installation of the hospital to the 33 KVA grid which guarantees 20-22 hours power supply. In this interview he granted newsmen recently, he highlights some of the achievements the hospital management has recorded in recent time as well as some areas of lack.
Excerpts:
May we meet you Sir?
I am Doctor Maduka Ngozi Roy, the Zonal Director of Central Hospital Agbor. I was in acting capacity since October 2019 and later became fully active in January 2020.
We heard that the hospital now enjoys constant power supply. How did you achieve this feat?
When I came in 2014, the major problem was electricity, buying of diesel was not enough.
Then we started pursing for it, we went to commissioner of Health, ministry of energy. Until I finished my tenure, it did not work out due to some logistics.
When I came back this time, I said to myself this thing has to work and God being on my side, government had already started working on it. We continued to pressure them and the contractors and finally in December 2019, it was activated. Before then we had a 250kv generator. The problem with it is that in 2 hours it has consumed diesel worth #13,000 so you cannot keep it running for a long time. Hospitals depend on their IGR. The IGR here is not that much like Warri. So having power is something paramount for any success to be achieved that is why we pursued it and by God’s grace we currently have light up to 20 hours a day .
However, the NEPA bill has risen to the extent that we have challenges with NEPA bill which is up to like six hundred to six hundred and fifty eight thousand on a monthly basis, but it is still economical compared to buying diesel and it brightens the hospital and every unit has power unlike before.
What are you doing to boost the PR of the hospital?
Things have really changed, when you look at your environment where you are working on, how are you doing? We have contemporaries like Warri, Ugheli and when you look at Agbor, the person in Agbor might no know how Agbor is doing. We are doing extremely well. The PR will take time before it improves. These days, we have access to the media, apart from our hospital PR system and we being civil servants, sometimes we are mindful how we direct the press because sometimes you can be misquoted and sometimes your comments can anger some persons. We don’t give out false information. For now I try as much as possible when I see anything negative about the hospital, I try to clarify it. We are thinking if we can engage those who can do good works like building the image of the hospital. For instance we have such people I would have given the assignment to clarify the comments of the public during the reports that was circulated four weeks ago, when it was heard that central hospital wants to conduct mass burial for unclaimed corpses. The comments was that why do they want to conduct mass burial, don’t they have good record keeping and secondly, why not befitting burial. In central hospital, they are a lot of accident cases that it is difficult to trace the relatives of such person, it’s just numbers we keep. As it is now, there are more that 130 unclaimed corpses. The question is do you do befitting burial for unknown corpse. My predecessors had a lot of issues with the media because of negative reports. Many things have been done voluntarily by individuals, like a Hilux was provided by Zenith Bank, Hon. Omoriejie repaired the entrance of the hospital from his pocket.
Apart from these achievements, what are the challenges?
Challenges are so many, firstly the number of staff is low in every department. During raining season, the weed overgrow our capacity to maintain them. If it is assessed the hospital will score low because of few labourers we have only 3 active labourers, we then have to employ 4 on our own .
Also the activities of some miscreants where they attack some our staff, we have tried to use community representative to get to the palace to talk to the people.
Our mortuary is an eyesore, the government like I heard from inside that they have approved a building for ultramodern mortuary but because of Covid-19 it was suspended, otherwise, we would have had a new mortuary.
We rely a lot on NYSC members to do some works, unfortunately accommodation is a problem otherwise if NYSC is still going on we would have requested for large number of persons to come. The accommodation we have was made to accommodate 16persons. As soon as the corps members hear that there is no accommodation they don’t come. We have so many problem.
In the aspect of equipments, we have oxygen plant but the light does not carry it and we resort to generator. If we could get a better generator, it will be betters. We are thinking of buying x-ray and ultrasound machine, we have it but they are limited. We are trying to run a partnership with a company called DIGIDMEN to provide CT scan in this environment. Where they get some percentage and we also get ours, but the committee is still meeting. Our physiotherapy is small, they are equipments but there is limited space.
We also need an OPU though I have made a lot of pressure on the government and they have been promised to provide one.
In all where do you see Central hospital in a few year from now?.
Well I believe it would be a lot better and a point of referal to other hospitals. Very soon we shall take delivery of a dialysis machine and renal centre donated by Rosary International Foundation through the Rotary Club of Agbor. This facility will be the first of its kind in this clime and would cater to people with kidney problems in this area and beyond.
Thanks a lot Sir
Thanks.
