Alliance Plans 200-bed Hospital, Medical University in FCT
Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
A major healthcare provider in the Federal Capital Teritory (FCT), the Alliance Hospital Group has revealed plan to commence the construction of a 200-bed hospital facility in the capital city before the end of the year.
The Chief Medical Director of Alliance Hospital Group, Dr. Christopher Otabor, who disclosed this to members of the Association of Nigeria Health Journalist (ANHEJ) at the weekend, said the group was also planning to establish a University of Medical Science that would help train postgraduate doctors to become consultants.
The surgeon who said Alliance Hospital was established in 2011, as a clinic, now has 66 beds space with five Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds to attend to patients in critical health conditions.
“As we speak, we’re working on our permanent site before the end of this year. I am going to invite you people to the groundbreaking ceremony for our permanent building. And it’s meant to be a 200-bed hospital facility in the FCT.
“We also intend to have a University of Medical Science, so we can have full time trained medical doctors and also train postgraduate doctors to become consultants. We are looking at maximum of 10 years to complete this project, just a projection but before the end of this year by God’s grace, we will lay the foundation stone for the hospital,” he explained.
Speaking on the facilities available at the hospital, the Medical Director said Alliance Hospital currently boosts of fully equipped five ICUs that are used to take care of patients in very critical health conditions.
He also said the hospital has special baby care unit with ventilators.
Atabo, said the five ICU beds in Alliance Hospital are all equipped with ventilators that have life support. According to him, each ventilator cost the hospital N20 million to acquire.
“That means at any time someone is not able to breathe, or somebody’s heart stops, or someone is not able to take charge of himself, we will take charge of him and of his life till when he recovers, and we have been able to save a lot of people with these five beds,” he said.
Atabo, also spoke of the importance of a well- equipped medical diagnostic laboratory centre, adding that not having good diagnostics of patient’s illness was a big problem in Nigeria healthcare system, because not too many diagnostics centres have the equipment to accurately diagnose a problem.
“So you find people throwing medications at something saying they are treating malaria and typhoid whereas something is going on underneath because they don’t have the equipment to diagnose,” he added.
When asked to assess the progress being made in health insurance scheme in the country, Atabo said government’s health insurance programme was flawed.
He noted that not much progress was being made in implementation of the health insurance scheme because private hospitals are not carried along.
According to him, the private hospitals are not showing enough interest because they do not see health insurance scheme to be profitable for private hospitals.
