Katsina State people are lamenting the dearth of medical personnel in government hospitals and have enjoined the government to address the situation urgently.
The state government says it is doing its best, however.
Those who spoke on Sunday in Katsina noted that most of the hospitals were short of medical doctors, nurses, and midwives.
They also lamented the shortage of medical laboratory technologists, and community health extension workers, compelling those at hand to be overwhelmed.
They expressed regrets that patients and their accompanying relatives suffer long hours in the hospitals before getting attention.
The solution, they submitted was for the state government to recruit more medical personnel.
Many said government hospital was their only choice as they could not afford to go to private hospitals.
They said common ailments like malaria fever, typhoid, injuries, and pneumonia were becoming difficult to handle.
, a patient’s father said he took his child to a public hospital on Thursday at 10 a.m., but he was not treated until around 1 p.m. due to large number of patients.
“When we went to the hospital, we discovered that it was only one staff member attending to patients at the Out-Patient Department.
“Some patients required emergency attention, but none was given.
“We request the government to employ more staff to bridge the gap,’’ he said.
A mother, Mrs Hamida Muhammad, said that the situation was more severe in rural communities.
In his remarks, Alhaji Mustapha Haruna, observed that recruiting more health personnel would also solve the problem of unemployment in the state.
He noted that hundreds of youths who graduated from various health training institutions in different fields were roaming the streets without jobs.
Reacting to concerns raised by the citizens, Commissioner for Health, Alhaji Yakubu Nuhu-Danja, said: “the state government is doing its best to address the shortage of human resources at all levels of healthcare delivery.
“Between September and October alone, Gov. Aminu Bello Masari approved the recruitment of 272 personnel in addition to more than 300 already recruited jointly with GAVI Alliance, at Primary Healthcare Centre level,’’ he said.
GAVI is a public-private global health partnership that targets increasing access to immunization in poor countries.
“At the secondary healthcare level (General Hospitals), more than 1,000 personnel were employed from 2020 to date.
“All these are in addition to the thousands of healthcare employees engaged on ad-hoc basis as approved by governments at all local government councils,’’ Nuhu-Danja added.
