Abuja mothers-to-be cry out…‘We go through hell in hospitals’

Chioma slept on one of the chairs of the antenatal hall of the Wuse General Hospital, her stomach protruding out in front of her. She carries on her face the unmistakable stress of one tired of waiting.  Just then the nurse calls out, “Number 21-30 come forward.” This jolted Chioma from her sleep. “Thank God […]

Chioma slept on one of the chairs of the antenatal hall of the Wuse General Hospital, her stomach protruding out in front of her. She carries on her face the unmistakable stress of one tired of waiting.  Just then the nurse calls out, “Number 21-30 come forward.” This jolted Chioma from her sleep. “Thank God they have called my number finally,” she whispers as she drags her feet through the fully packed hall of waiting pregnant women, holding her waist. After answering few questions from the nurses, she walked back to her seat, which has already been quickly taken over by another woman who was just waiting for her to stand up.

 

Looking tired and understandably grumpy, Chioma told Weekly Trust: “I slept here last night just to be able to register for the antenatal today. I have been coming here but each time they say they have picked the required number. The only way for me to make it on the list is to sleep here so as to be around when the nurses start work.”

Though Fatima Usman who lives in Karimo did not sleep at the hospital, she made sure she left home in the early hours of the morning so as to make it on the “nurses’ list”. “I live in Karimo, my husband came to drop me by 3am today and I am 23 on the list,” she says.

Francisca’s story is not too different. “I live at Garki,” she says. “Last week I was here at 5am but I was not lucky. We were 173 women that came for antenatal; the nurse took only 60 people as she says she was the only one. Today, we are lucky that they took about 90 people.”   Linda Adah from Mpape who was sitting next to Francisca says she had come to the hospital as early as 5am and was 59 on the list.

The question though is why do these women endure such rigors and hardship to register for antenatal care at the Wuse hospital? Says Mrs Bukky Oladosu, a business woman: “I grew up in Wuse and I got married here. Wuse Hospital has more experienced nurses. I know a nurse that has been here since I was in secondary school and she is still here. As a matter of fact she was here when I gave birth to my first child. So, now that I’m pregnant again I decided I will come to the hospital again.”

Even though the General Hospitals in Abuja are the preferred places by pregnant women in Abuja looking for antenatal care, the hospitals could not contend with the influx of patients because there are few nurses around to attend to the patients and the hospital facilities are overstretched. “I think they need more hands and equipment,” says Mrs. Oladosu.

Oyekunle Moyesere who came from Jikwoyi, another Abuja suburb, gives her impression, saying, “Even if they have enough nurses, where is the space? They don’t have enough space to attend to everybody. When I came, the nurses had to tell the other women to go because the place was already congested.”  The hall where the pregnant women were being attended to was filled to capacity. While some got chairs to seat others stood at the hallway waiting. To ease the pain of waiting, the women share banters of their previous delivery to those that are with their first pregnancy. Others bought snacks and soft drinks for refreshment and to stave off hunger.

When Weekly Trust sought to know why women find it difficult to access antenatal care at the hospital, the chairman of the Wuse General Hospital referred our reporters to the Director, Hospital Management Board (HMB), FCT, saying he was not in the position to respond to any question except with permission from the HMB.

However, a staff of the hospital who wants to be anonymous says the nurses have so much to do.  “When these women come, they take their history, check their blood pressure, check their weight, do a PVC test to ascertain their blood level, then they go for the HIV test before they open a file for them. By the time they finish attending to these women, they end up closing at 4-5pm when normally they should close at 2pm.  So it’s quite hectic and some of these women don’t want to go to another hospital.”

The ordeal faced by these women raises a pertinent question: If women in the capital city find it difficult to access antenatal services easily, what is the hope for women in rural areas? And what hope is there for Nigeria to attain the MDG 4, which is to reduce under-five mortality rate by two-thirds before 2015 and MDG 5 which is to reduce the maternal mortality rate by three quarters before 2015?

Mrs. Agnes Odutunde who resides in Mararaba, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory,   said she was at the Wuse General Hospital the previous day to register her name at 12 am. This, she said, was to enable her be one of the earliest people to see the matron.   However, she explained that she couldn’t go back home that day after collecting a number so she had to sleep over at the hospital. But despite the rigors she had gone through to be one of the earliest people to be attended to, Odutunde was still waiting at 2 pm to see the matron. Her number was 127. A mother of three, she disclosed that the process wasn’t as difficult when she put to bed two years ago and that there seemed to be increase in the population of pregnant women in Abuja. But despite that, she says the hospital was still her first place of choice.

But while the General Hospitals in the city centre are overpopulated, those in the suburbs, from where majority of these women come from are not as populated.  Ignatius Eze, a civil servant who lives at Kubwa, a suburb in the FCT, whose wife also went through the rigorous process of accessing health care, said the general hospitals in the suburbs are not as populated like those in Maitama, Wuse, Garki and Asokoro but a lot of expectant mothers still prefer to go to the latter hospitals for antenatal care because of their belief that they have better qualified personnel.

While nurses and matrons at the General Hospitals in the city centre have often encouraged the women to visit the General Hospitals close to them so they can be adequately catered for, the women still prefer to go through the stress at the city centre. The women give different reasons for their continued patronage of hospitals at the city centre instead of the ones close to them.

Justina Adolu, a pregnant mother says she feels no stress coming all the way from where she stays at Mararaba because she was not getting the desired attention from the hospital close to her. A mother of two, she said she stopped patronizing the hospital in Mararaba and switched over to the General Hospital in Asokoro after the birth of her first child.

Mrs. Gift Thompson, a teacher, described the attitude of the health workers in the General Hospital at Nyanya where she lives as “too rude”. She says, “You’re always shouted down at any given opportunity. Even when you raise your hand to ask a question, they will not entertain it. I decided that even though the services are free, I couldn’t continue to take the insults they heap on us after my first delivery there. Here in Asokoro, they treat you with respect. They entertain any question you ask them.”

A civil servant who wants to be anonymous says she couldn’t attend the staff hospital close to her at Garki where she resides. She says, “How do you expect me to go for antenatal at the Federal Staff Hospital close to me? Do you know that even though it’s supposed to be a government hospital, it’s so expensive?”

Comparing the fees charged in both hospitals she says, “To buy baby items in Asokoro will not cost you more than N5,000 at most but in Garki, you spend more than N10,000.  In Asokoro, you pay about N1, 000 for normal delivery and about N10, 000 at the staff clinic. Just the other day,  I conducted some tests and the money I paid was not more than N1,000 but if it were in the staff clinic close to me, I would have coughed out more than N5,000.”

She adds: “I pray not to have complications during pregnancy at the Staff clinic; otherwise you will pay through your nose.  Operations there will not cost less than N100, 000. Sometime back, somebody who required operation was begging them with N70, 000 but they refused. Recently, I saw her here at Asokoro attending clinic.  So you see, even if you have to wait here for a while for services, it’s worth the wait.”

Mrs Grace Amupitan, who is five months pregnant, says she wakes up as early as 4am to get ready and set out for the hospital to attend antenatal care every Friday. She said: “I reside at Gosa but I registered in Kuje General Hospital because it is closer to where I stay.  I leave home as early as 4am to be able to be among the first 20 people but surprisingly I always never make it but always get a number close to 50. We are always very much and any time I go for antenatal I know that I will not have anything done for that day again because I end up spending the whole day there. I have no choice than to go there because it is free service that they offer there. The services provided, drugs and even scanning are sometimes free but I don’t know about delivery, if that would be free too. Most times people come over to sleep so that they can be among the first people to be attended to by the doctors and the nurses. For me the whole process is really tedious and stressful.”

Habeeba Muhammed, who is nursing a two-month-old baby, said she had to leave home as early as possible and most times observe her morning prayers in the hospital. “I am glad that I have delivered safely and I am done with the whole stress of going to the hospital as early as 4.30am just to make sure I am among the first 30 pregnant women on queue. At a time I resorted to sleeping at the hospital, even though my husband was not happy with that.”

Clearly, better services and low fees charged for services are driving demand in the hospitals at the city centre. But the long waits pose health hazards, especially for expectant mothers, says Dr. Nelvin Eze, a medical doctor. He says prolonged stay in hospital can expose the women to mosquito bites, leading to malaria. He adds that other infections could also result from the prolonged stay, especially for pregnant women who are susceptible to infections.