THE PROLOGUE
Welcome to LUTH, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, located in Idi-Araba area of Lagos State. This full-fledged medical school, a tertiary hospital, has seen millions of patients in its 57 years of existence. It was established in July 1962. In all of these years, this health facility has continued to see stunning cases, and has saved countless lives. At a point, it was the pride of Africa as people all over the continent came there to seek medical help. At its prime, some government functionaries of other nations chose to be treated at LUTH, the way Nigeria’s leaders now fly to London, India, Germany, etc. to treat ordinary cough and catarrh.
Over the years, like many other things Nigerian, LUTH has been abandoned by successive governments. Funding has been epileptic amid increasing number of patients in a country where poverty is dealing a deadly blow on a huge percentage of the populace.
Although the physical structures are still at the same place, maintenance has been a huge headache. Over the years, the institution has continued to lose personnel who readily jump at increasing offers from Saudi Arabia, Canada, among other places.
The increasing number of patients appears too overwhelming for the facility and personnel amid paucity of funding. The sorry state of things is that most times the personnel and equipment are so stretched that they become helpless. Bed spaces are not always available. And this cannot possibly be blamed on the management and personnel, because there are too many needs chasing the meagre resources.
Expectedly and understandably too, patients who want their lives saved at all costs are crying there; relations, who want their people to live are lamenting and throwing tantrums, but the LUTH management says things are not the way they are being painted outside.
Indeed, for the management and the personnel, something must have made the “cocoyam leaf to make uncertain sound.”
The LUTH story is captured in the conversations our correspondent had with some patients, their relations, and management of the institution. The interactions are a potpourri of ‘truth and fallacy’.
