FCCPC Boss Advocates Domestication of Bill for  Quality Health Care Delivery

Hammed Shittu in Ilorin

Executive Vice Chairman, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), Mr.  Babatunde Irukera, has canvassed for the domestication of the Patients’ Bill of Rights (PBRs) in the nation’s health institutions.

This, Irukera said, would go a long way to ensure better quality health care delivery in the country.

He told journalists yesterday in Ilorin, Kwara State’s capital, after visits to public and private health institutions in the state for domestication of the patients’ bill of rights in the facilities that domestication of patients’ rights in the nation’s health institutions would go a long way to instill confidence in patients.

He said: “There are certain standards and expectations from the medical practitioners and obligations of the patients.

“It is no use having structures with medical equipment when patients are not treated with empathy. People want a place when they feel welcomed and cared for rather than where everything is upside down. I think patients should be treated in a far superior way than what we do now.”

Irukera noted that the PBRs are about aggregation of rights of patients and the medical practitioners.

He lamented that many patients do not know their rights, “hence the need for consumer education and work with health care institutions to make them sign and domesticate and display the rights.”

He said that such complications arising from doctors/nurses relationship, palpable acrimony among health care personnel, issues on labour and strikes should not affect rights of patients.

“It should be about responsibility and not superiority. There should be mutual respect because patients are the victims of the acrimony, e.g. in strike actions usually embarked upon by medical practitioners etc.

“Thus, BRPs was introduced. Patients have fundamental rights to be treated fairly and in dignified manner,” he said.

In his response to the remarks made by the executive vice chairman of FCCPC, the Deputy Governor of Kwara State, Mr. Kayode Alabi, advised the commission to aggressively campaign for te effective implementation of the PBRs, adding that it should also put people on ground to monitor its effectiveness, “Or else nothing may be achieved. They need to work on our mindset. We need to care about our rights: doctors and patients.”

Alabi pledged that the state government would partner with the commission since it placed premium on health care and education.

Also, the Chairman, Medical Advisory Council (CMAC), University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), Dr. Louis Odegha, on behalf of the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the Hospital, Professor Abdulla Dasilva Yussuf, said that the facility is in support of the PBRs in the Servicom.

Odegha said that the staff of the teaching hospital had been trained on rights of the patients, and added that billboards and other media campaign activities had been done to stimulate people.

He said: “It has to be a continuum. I also teach medical students at 400 Level on rights and importance of patients’ rights.

“We have domesticated patients’ human rights here. We hold the view that it will go a long way to instill confidence in patients.”