Gunshots, robbery victims, should be treated while awaiting police report — Expert
Gunshots, robbery victims, should be treated while awaiting police report — Expert
A Medical Practitioner, Dr Abib Olamitoye, has urged operators of medical facilities in Nigeria to always attend to victims of gunshots and robbery first, while awaiting police report.
Speaking during an interview with newsmen Ibadan on Tuesday, Olamitoye noted that this would save a lot of victims from preventative deaths that usually occurred while waiting for treatment clearance from the police.
Olamitoye, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ibadan Central Hospital, suggested the need for all medical facilities to have good working relationship and contact phone numbers of police divisions within their jurisdictions, for such emergencies.
“We need to start attending to the victims first, then demand for police report and if a victim or a relative cannot provide police report in the process of treatment, then hospitals can call the attention of the police, since the victim is under their care and cannot escape with such condition.
“The patient must be kept alive first, then we can now talk about police report, price, hospital card and other necessary things,” he said.
Speaking on medical tourism among the political class, he noted that majority of the locally trained medical practitioners, could do far better than their counterparts trained abroad, if provided with the right infrastructure and good working conditions.
He noted that some locally trained medical practitioners had resolved many complex medical issues excellently, even with improvised equipments and unfriendly working environment.
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Olamitoye then urged government to urgently address welfare, infrastructure decay and other issues in the country’s medical sector, to prevent brain drain that had been ravaging the sector.
“Costs and condition of training medical practitioners in Nigeria should be a great concern to government and the general public.
“During our time as students at the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan, there was nothing like power failure or shortage of water.
“The medical tourism is not as a result of lack of competent hands, but due to decayed infrastructure and other issues.
“We need urgent attention to issues of doctors welfare packages, as they spend longer years to study. They need to feed their families and meet up with other responsibilities.
“Foreign countries put more value on Nigerian doctors and that is why they excel when they get the right equipments and good environment to work over there,” he said.
