*Nurses withdraw services, down

General Hospital, Sabon Tasha, Kaduna, one of the state’s owned secondary health facility located in Chikun LGA of Kaduna South in Kaduna state has been abandoned amidst diphtheria disease spread.

Our correspondent who was there reported that the hospital in Sabon Tasha, a densely populated suburb in Kaduna town has not been having electricity and water for over one year

Over sixty (60) Nurses and Midwives working in the facility, who could no longer bear the condition have withdrawn their services, a female nurse who pleaded anonymity made the revelation on Tuesday.

The Nurse who spoke to our correspondent extensively said they had laid the complaints to their management staff several times in written and oral with no solution found to the problems.
“Presently we’ve withdrawn our services as Nurses and Midwives , since last Saturday 00hours. We’re more than sixty in number.

“The reason is that we’ve been working without light and water for the past one year, that was since first week of September 2022.

“We’ve been complaining, the management has been writing to them in the ministries including that of health, the commissioners and the Head of Service amongst others, but up till now nothing has changed”, she said.

She also said they had, through the management made entries and correspondences to the relevant authorities under the current administration of Governor Uba Sani but were yet to see any change or solutions.

“Yes we’ve written to the current administration through our management several times. We have our management here, we complained to them about lack of light and water, which they received our complaints and then forwarded same to the authorities alongside the complaints they’ve been making, ‘

She added that, when that one was not attended to, they wrote them and gave them ultimatum around July and August 2023.

” But they pleaded we should give them sometimes to see how they could resolve it with the ministry.
“The problems lingered as we did not see anything been done. We wrote another ultimatum again, that if light and water did not come we’ll cease our services, and give them time to do that.
“So, we did not see them doing anything until the ultimatum expired and we withdrew our services”, she narrated with lamentation.

“We used to copy our national body each time we write to the hospital management”, she further stated.

“So the authority went to our national officers and pleaded with them and asked them to appeal to us to give them sometimes. We also gave them, and we gave them up to almost one month and nothing happened So we withdrew our services”, she stressed.

According to her, the electric transformer developed problem and went off, and was out of function for almost eight months. They took it for repair and later brought back the transformer, after series of complaints and pressure.”,she explained

She also said the transformer blew up again and again, and could no longer function or be useful to the hospital anymore till date.

However, the nurses spokesperson said they have no knowledge of such problems in any of their sister facilities in other parts of the state within the metropolis.

Accordingly, she also lamented that the Light is the one that gives them Water in the hospital because they use borehole, “Imaging when people come for deliveries, admissions, blood transmission, emergency in the hospital?.

*All the nursing services we render most times we used our phones, rechargeables which does not last. Imagine when you attend to patients and you have no water to wash your hands.
“Its unethical that from hospital you go and touch other people without washing your hands. It is against our ethics we ought to observe universal professional declaration, washing of hands is very key”, she said.
On what happens to the hospital morgue or mortuary, she explained that, even though its been managed privately, it sometimes stinks by polluting the air

All efforts to see the Medical Director failed as he was absent at the time our reporter visited.

Contacted, the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Uba Sani, Mohammed Lawal Shehu could not respond at press time.