Dr. Tayo Haastrup is the Assistant Director, Information and Protocol Management, at the National Hospital Abuja. He is also the spokesperson of the hospital. In this interview with Mojola Peters, Haastrup speaks on the various projects of the hospital, including its trauma center.
Would you say the National Hospital is living up to its mandate?
The National hospital was actually conceived during the late General Abacha’s government by the wife through Family Support Programme of that time which gave birth to the hospital which was then called National Hospital for Women and Children.
But because of the central location, equipment facilities and other things, it became glaring that this hospital cannot be for only women and children, it has to serve the whole populace. As times went on within two years the name was changed to National Hospital to reflect the services we offer.
When we started the men started trooping in and everybody started enjoying the services of the National Hospital. The services we render at the apex medical center are not generally common to other hospitals and that is why other parts of the country refer patients to National Hospital when they have issues which they know can only be resolved in the National Hospital. Of course when you talk about bone marrow scan and others, the UCH Ibadan and LUTH always send patients to National Hospital Abuja.
How will you describe the patronage?
Since the inception of this hospital the population of Abuja has increased highly. So the patronage of the National Hospital has also increased. We started with about 200 beds but because of the crowd we started extending the wards and we are still expanding because the population of Abuja which has increased and doubled one way or the other also tells on the kind of patronage of the hospital.
Looking at the development in the medical world,what new grounds has the NHA made?
There are so many areas of services that we have. We actually have one of the best Intensive Care Units. Remember the bomb blast victims who were in critical situation, they were brought here because of the ICU which is one of the best in the country. And you will also remember the Governor of Taraba state when he had the air crash accident, he was brought here. Some other known and unknown dignitaries passed through our ICUs to stabilize them before they demand to seek services abroad, so this is like a stop gap for them.
We have also neurological treatment and orthopedic treatment amongst many others and we have the IVF Unit in the National Hospital which is one of the best in government hospitals in the country and the cheapest. We have recorded very high success rate of this IVF. We are proud of this and we say it from time to time that our IVF is functioning with a very high rate of success.
Of recent also, our orthopedic department apart from the services we render, we now do hip and knee replacements which people ordinarily seek abroad. We can now replace hip and knee especially for people with old age or people that have problems with their legs. Recently we have what we called high level Trauma Center. This Trauma Center is the first of its kind in Nigeria. It is about 90 bedded; it has lot of facilities with lift. We also have what we called the helipad. What that means is that as far as this country is concerned today, the National Hospital is the only hospital in the country with a functioning helipad.
What that means is that from anywhere in the country air ambulance can go there and pick patients to the National Hospital and immediately they get here everything have been put in place to ensure that the patient gets the best treatment. It has been tested; Road Safety Commission partnered with an organization to test the helipad, NEMA has brought their air ambulance helipad, so it is functioning very well.
It is for the public to know that just as it happens in any developed country it is happening here, a patient from anywhere can fly to the National Hospital for treatment. It is one of our latest projects and it was commissioned by the President represented by the Vice- President to commission the Trauma Center. It is working well and we are receiving a lot of patients. This is part of the development that is happening.
In the next few months, we will also be commissioning the National Cancer Center. It is 80 percent completed. By the time it is commissioned it will be a clarion call to all Nigerians who are cancer victims, they can come when the equipment are ready. Presently we are fixing the equipment and when we are through with that we will also commission it for the public to know that it is not only the National Trauma Center but the National Cancer Center and with all normal medical services that is going on here.
Someone in his own assessment referred to the National Hospital as a national headache as a result of the financial requirement needed to enjoy facilities here, is the National Hospital meant for a selected few in the society?
The National Hospital with the way it is set up is to render health and medical service to those who need it. So National Hospital is for all Nigerians. It is a public hospital. It is good that you ask because if you do not come here you will not know the details of the fees and different prices of all the services that we render here but because of the serene buildings, because of the name attached to it, so anybody can just say I am not going there because it would be too expensive. But I tell you, we have as low as N2,000 laboratory charges, there is N1,200. To get a card here for the children is N500, for the adult is N1,500. And what we also tell people is that we have different categories of wards, we have what we called 6 bedded, we have what we called 2 bedded we also have the private wards. That means if you cannot afford to be in 2 bedded, 4 bedded, you can be in 6 bedded. And 6 bedded is just about N1,000 per day where as the four bedded is about N2,500 and 2 bedded is about N3,000 plus. Then we have the one bedded which is like a private unit with all the facilities,, you do not say it is expensive it just depends on the level you can accommodate.
Our IVF, if you go outside for IVF they pay as much as N1.5 million but if you come to National Hospital you pay about N700,000 which you pay in phases. These are very affordable services but it depends on your pocket, it is for everybody. I must also let you know that we have what we called indigent patients. There are some patients that are brought as accident victims but our policy is that we must save lives; our policy is that we must give services and stabilize patients so that they will not die, at the end of it all we do not ask for money at the initial stage. Last year we have a bill of about N10 million from people that did not pay for services that we rendered to them. But definitely to support the system and to move forward we must support with funding in terms of people also paying charges and fees for the services we are giving them because the rate of the hospital is high, the environment is nice and we have a specialized consultants in different fields of the medical world.
What are those services that you are looking forward to rendering to the public?
As far as this environment is concerned with the development on, I hardly see any area we have not gone into or something we have not done.The only thing is that we need the support of both the government and the private individuals either financially or through donating some equipment.
In any hospital, it is important that some equipment after five years it should be replaced. These are very expensive equipment, talking about the MRI machines, the CT scan equipment and some other equipment.
If we have enough funding and if private individuals are helping just like someone donated to the National Trauma Center, we would be okay. If we see individuals like that the hospital will be able to sustain the services we are giving. With the Trauma Center it is exactly what happened in any developed world and we believe Nigerians should be able to embrace this. We have some people that do rent air ambulances even in this country and in other parts of West Africa. There is nothing wrong for the National Hospital to have its own air ambulance so that if they call us from any where, we will be able to go there and get the patients there. We have covered a lot of areas but there is bone transplant which we are still hoping we will go into. That is another major research area in medicine which we will continue to do more on but definitely the way we are moving we will get there.
With the issue of police report when it comes to rendering services to some patients, where does National Hospital stand?
In the past, we discussed with the Inspector General of Police and the Road Safety Corps Marshal, the way they just bring patients to the National Hospital, accident victims, dead ones and the living ones. Sometimes they dump them in front of the hospital and the dead ones in front of the mortuary. We have discussed that and it is resolved. We must attend to every patient. In the process of doing that if we have any suspicion we contact the police. We already have a police post here, we do not discriminate; we do not say we will not give services in order to save life.
What is the latest on the National Trauma Center?
The trauma center is the best in the country. It is serving its purpose. We can proudly say that with the level of facilities and the level of medical personnel who sit in, we believe that life will be saved one way or the other in the Trauma Center.
Is there any difference between the Trauma Center and the Emergency Unit?
The Trauma Center is also an emergency unit but when they say trauma, it encompasses other dangerous cases of medical challenges. When you have an accident and a lot of people are involved, we take them there because of the facilities. When you have a very serious fatal accident, that is a trauma and also even personally we can have a very serious case of heart attack it is also trauma, we have to take the patient to that place. For instance in the trauma center we have the burns section. There is a degree of burns that we take to the trauma center. We have to isolate the burns patients because there is a degree of burns that can cause infection. This is because we want to reduce the pressure on the main ICU, so instead of transferring the burn patient to the ICU we take them to the trauma center. This is also a very big achievement on our part.
