Lagos Floods General Hospital With Mobile-Toilets

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No fewer than eight mobile toilets (four for males, four for females) have been brought to the Gbagada General Hospital to serve visitors to the hospital.

PUNCH Metro also noted on Thursday that the management of the hospital had cleared the faeces in the facility and reopened the public toilet that had been shut for months.

Two environmental officers had also been reportedly deployed in the hospital.

The development, it was learnt, was the state government’s reaction to a report published by PUNCH Metro on Tuesday.

Our correspondent, during a two week investigation, had observed that patients and visitors to the hospital eased themselves in the bush on the premises of the hospital.

PUNCH Metro also discovered that some of the visitors’ toilets in the hospital had broken down.

Our correspondent gathered on Thursday that a fact-finding team of the state Ministry of Health visited the hospital and made some recommendations.

Our correspondent observed that the visitors’ toilet had been reopened and a lady had been asked to man its entrance.

The bush, where our correspondent observed moulds of faeces, had been cleared.

The toilet in the surgical ward had also been cleaned.

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Dr. Lateef Lawal, explained that the changes were results of The PUNCH’s report.

He explained that the hospital management was doing its best, but was sometime overwhelmed by the crowd which flooded its facility daily.

He said, “We have three different hospitals here: there’s the burns and trauma unit, being run by the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital. We have the traditional Gbagada General Hospital; and then, there is the Cardiac and Renal Centre. So, this place is not just for Gbagada General Hospital.”

He said the number of people thronging the hospital was taking its tolls on the facilities, adding that the medical personnel attended to more than 700 patients daily.

“On a daily basis we attend to about 700 patients, which makes it about 21,000 patients in a month.

“We admit we don’t have enough toilet facilities to cope with the volume of people who come here. The government is still planning to put up more structures.

“Since your publication, we have talked to stakeholders to see what we can do to solve the problem. Part of what we have done is to deploy two environmental officers in the hospital.

“We have also reopened the visitors’ toilet in the interim. We are trying to see the kind of engineering we can do to make it more functional. We also got mobile public toilets until we are able to repair the broken toilets,” he added.

The Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Health, Deola Salako, said the state government would continue to work hard to give residents quality healthcare.