By Umar Faruq Usman,Dutse
Information available to 247ureports.com indicates that the number of women attending Birnin kudu federal medical Centre has reduced drastically due to abrupt increase of price for the purchase of medical registration forms by the management of the hospital from N200 to N2000.
One of the patients who spoke to our correspondent in confidence stated that the majority of women especially those from rural areas have stopped visiting the federal medical Centre for medical treatment.
Another aggrieved patient, Hajia Asabe stated that most of the households are not able to afford the price of the form. She explained that a lot of the women have switch to the state general hospital as a substitute because their husbands are not able to afford to pay the two thousand naira.
Another patient, Hauwa muhammed usman said pregnant women are facing the brunt of the difficulties largely due lack of man power at the hospital which was exacerbated by the nationwide strike. She explained that it seriously affected the lives of women and children – “only nurses are attending to patients, a single nurse attends 20 to 30 patient a day”.
247ureports.com contacted officials of the medical center. An official of the hospital, Hajia Asabe Bala spoke but with fear. She said the strike really affected their ability to perform their official assignment and has also affected the lives of the peoples in the area. She added however that they are doing their best to assist the women and children especially on ante natal care delivery.
She confirmed that the increase of money for the sale of patient’s card really stopped some of the patients from attending the Centre especially the rural women who usually come from the villages because most of the husbands are farmers and majority of them are not able to give N2000 naira to their wives to buy the medical form. The numbers of women has drastically reduced from 50 patients per doctor per day to less than 20patients.
