Boko Haram: UMTH employs 100 doctors

The University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) has employed 100 medical doctors to boost manpower and enhance quality healthcare services in the state.

Dr Ibrahim Kuburu, the UMTH President of Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) disclosed this in an interview on Sunday in Maiduguri.

Kuburu said medical doctors in various fields, including surgeons, optomologists, pathologist, paediatricians and radiologists, were employed to fill the gap of shortages of health providers.

“Some of the major challenges that confronted the health sector were the increasing demands of not only health services but social services in general.

“In the past, during the heat of Boko Haram insurgency, the hospital was confronted with the challenges of handling mass casualties with various degrees of injuries from bomb blasts.

“The care for such patients is a specialised care that posed a great challenge in the state. But despite these challenges, the ARD have remained resilient and committed to providing efficient healthcare services to the people.

“We have conducted some outreach in some orphanage where some 200 children were examined and enrolled into immunisation programmes.

“There is still much work to do as we are working toward extending our free medical outreach to IDPs. So far our mother body NMA had conducted some outreach in Bakassi camp.

“The ARD is working toward reaching out to IDPs especially those in the liberated communities.

“On the issue of welfare, I will say that the demands were well catered for. The Chief Medical Director of UMTH, Prof. Abdulrahman Tahir, just upgraded ARD complex. This is indeed worthy of commendation.

“One of the aims of the ARD is to provide a congenial environment for laying foundation of efficient and effective residency training that would have a legacy for the younger ones to emulate.

“In the areas of accommodation, a significant improvement has been made by securing some more houses for our members to occupy.

“It may also interest you to note that over N1 million trapped with MTN Nigeria since 2012 has now been recovered by this EXCO and this has been judiciously utilised to provide internet service for our members in the last eight months,” he said.