By Chuks Eke
Prof. Joseph Ugboaja, the Chief Medical Director, CMD of Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, NAUTH, Nnewi, Anambra state has revealed that the vision of the institution as contained in its 10-year actiin plan is to rank among the top three teaching hospitals in the country.
He said NAUTH would not mind ranking the best among other teaching hospitals in the country but due to the fact that it is the newest, it has set up immediate term, medium term and long term goals to rank among the top three from where it would pursue the best among equals in the country.
Prof. Ugboaja who disclosed this to newsmen while announcing the proposed official working visit of the Minister of Health, Muhammad Ali Pate to commission some projects executed at the Permanent Site of the Teaching Hospital, at Oraifite in Ekwusigo Local Government Area of the state, said the ambition of NAUTH to rank among the three top propelled him and his management team to Marshall out the immediate, medium and long term action goals to achieve the desired target.
According to Ugboaja, “as at 2021 when I came on board as CMD, the hospital was already about 31 years old and we were still at a temporary site and we began to fashion out our immediate, medium and long term goals,”.
“Our immediate term goal was to stabilize our services at our Nnewi temporary site and to upgrade the structures there. We didn’t have any functional Dialysis but we procured some. We have equally bought theatre equipments”.
“We marshalled out nine strategic pillars we intend to achieve under that immediate term goal. We needed people who were willing to translate our vision into reality and we assembled experts and physical infrastructures including buildings, roads and drainages, transport infrastructure, ICT, power, acquisition of top notch equipment and digitalization”.
“With all these steps so far, we moved towards phasing out analogue system and replacing them with digital system. Human resource management became our pillar and the third in our priority list. We decided to fashion out a good welfare package to make our staff happy and comfortable. We introduced collaboration and partnership with some good spirited individuals as our fourth pillar with internal and external stakeholders involved”.
The visit of the Health Minister, Ali Pate on Wednesday is key to us as he would commission some key projects. During the visit which is his maiden official visit, Chief Cletus Ibeto of Ibeto Group and Sir Emeka Offior, Chairman of EEDC would be honoured for their outstanding contributions towards the development of NAUTH.
“Our newly completed GOPD Complex will be named after Ibeto, while about 250-bed medical complex will be named as Sir Emeka Offior Medical Complex”.
