From Linus Oota, Lafia
Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital
(DASH), Lafia, Dr. Yakubu Ashuku, has disclosed that management of the hospital does not ask for money before treating emergency cases. Consequently, he said that the action was in compliance with the Nasarawa State Government’s directive that the hospital should go ahead and do the treatment of all emergency cases and if the relations are around they could pay the bill, but if they couldn’t, the hospital should direct such a bill to the state government. The CMD stated this during a chat with our correspondent in Lafia when reacting to an online publication that accused the hospital of neglecting a patient who was in the hospital with an emergency case. An online publication had reported that due to the very poor state of facilities at DASH, the Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) of the Nasarawa State Univeristy Keffi, Dr. K’tso Nghargbu could not be admitted in a bed but was abandoned on a mat at the emergency unit of the hospital and was not given emergency treatment as there was no doctor on duty to attend to him. Ashuku said: “We saw the online publication and there is no truth in what the patient said about the hospital. I am aware that the patient came in here and was seen by the casualty officer in the emergency unit and also subsequently reviewed by the surgical team on duty and given the basic medications that would stabilize him while preparing him for further investigation and definitive treatment. “It was along the line that this same patient requested that he wanted to be transferred to Federal Medical Centre, Keffi where his house is, because of proximity to his people, and we obliged him, only for us to see subsequently that he made some false accusations against DASH linking us with government of the state which by all indications, the government is doing very well in virtually all areas of endearvour.”