Flood: University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital seeks help, set to resume basic services

We have cleaned up the water at the hospital and basic services will resume, the Chief Medical Director of the Hospital told PREMIUM TIMES.

The University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) is set to reopen for basic services on Monday, two weeks after it was shut down due to devastating flooding that ravaged the northeastern Borno State.

The facility sustained significant water damage and was forced to halt its operations, the hospital’s Chief Medical Director, Ahmad Ahidjo, told PREMIUM TIMES. However, basic skeletal service will resume on Monday.

“We have cleaned up the water at the hospital and basic services will resume,” Mr Ahidjo, a professor, said. “We have fumigated the facility and we are now assessing the extent of damage to medical equipment.”

The status of some hospital equipment has yet to be ascertained. The hospital head reiterated that the hospital needs urgent support to resume operating at optimal capacity.

On Monday, Mr Ahidjo said the facility will open its Accident and Emergency Unit, the Trauma Centre and all the emergency areas. The Clinics will resume services too.

The severe flooding in Maiduguri was triggered by the collapse of Alau Dam —Maiduguri’s main water source. Houses were swept away to the very last brick in the Gwange and Gamboru areas of the state.

Local authorities are overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum described the extent of the damage in the state as “beyond human imagination.”

On Friday, the governor said the state government is willing to do everything possible to assist the teaching hospital. Mr Zulum added that the Maiduguri Teaching Hospital has the most up-to-date medical diagnostic and therapeutic equipment in the country so it’s necessary to assist it.

The floods, which have killed more than 30 people and displaced more than 400,000 people across Maiduguri, have worsened existing humanitarian crises in the state. Over one million people have been affected by flooding so far this year in Nigeria, according to the National Emergency Operations Centre.

Rescue operations continued 13 days later, with some parts of the city returning to normal as the waters receded.

At the teaching hospital, Mr Ahidjo said the flooding was simply “disastrous” and the loss was “enormous.” He told PREMIUM TIMES that the whole of the teaching hospital was flooded.

“Virtually everything that we have on the ground floor is affected.”

It will be difficult to say when we will resume for the laboratories, diagnostics centres, radiography centres, and cancer centres, he said. It all depends on how fast we can rectify the challenges that we identified.

The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Health Institutions, Amos Magaji, said the House will move a motion for urgent intervention in the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital.

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that medical equipment at the multimillion-dollar Radiotherapy Department was flooded, causing damage to expensive state-of-the-art equipment such as two Elekta Linear Accelerators, two Brachytherapy machines and a Canon Large Bore CT Simulator.