LASU's HEALTH FIASCOWritten By Charis Kings.

A

world class institution like the Lagos state university would be expected to have a clinic or an health centre befitting it's grandiose name but sadly reverse is the case as there are some disturbing practices and a few disappointing inadequacies. The Lagos state university's health centre shares almost the same methods as most public hospital and most times their detestable features are equal even a few of which I'd state below.

The same way many public hospitals have a reputation for delaying patients the exact same can be said about LASU's clinic. Although public hospitals have an almost legitimate excuse to delay the hundreds of patients trooping in by their numbers but what excuse does LASU's health centre have? On personal visit to the health centre at specific timing I observed that on average at the least 10 people visit the records division of the health centre and 20 at most. Very small number indeed, either students are delayed for checking or rather validation of hospital numbers or they're delayed for seeing one of the two available doctors at the time. It's absurd to have only 2 doctors available in a facility for about 15,000 students roaming the school grounds likely to fall ill.

Even in the emergency unit the delay is still inevitable as the same student either suffering from an ulcer attack or an asthma attack would still be made to visit the records unit to validate his hospital rights whilst groaning in pain, Emergency unit indeed. Apparently it is check first health later.

As if the delays were not enough the available rooms in the emergency unit is nothing to write home about there's about 4 beds per room and there's just two room's available. It's extremely absurd. Assuming a scenario where there's an outbreak of a pandemic (hopefully not), one would wonder where the health centre would hope to take care of the excess students. Even if as little as 12 students require admission to the clinic, The health centre would have to let go of a well enough number of students to fend for themselves. Yet another absurdity.

A couple of students have even reported some levels of sexual assault especially from male doctors both in the emergency and records unit if the health centre. Though they claim to be carrying out proper medical procedures which would have been believable if some female students haven't been detained a little longer in the clinic and hadn't been asked to drop their numbers so the doctors could 'check up' on them.
The pharmacy of the health centre cannot just be ignored when speaking of the inadequacy of the clinic. There are literally no drugs there most of the time. Many times medicines have been prescribed to unwell students and they are asked to walk over to the pharmacy for the drugs only for the students to end up receiving only paracetamol and another prescription and redirection to any pharmacy outside the school with the excuse that the prescribed drugs have been exhausted, everytime. This would have been completely understandable if it was a rare occurrence but nowadays it's totally normal. it's only on rare occasions that the pharmacy can actually provide all the prescribed drugs to ailing students. The most painful part been it's mostly the expensive drugs that are usually absent from the health centre and students end up bearing the burden of cost, even with the Ten thousand naira medical fee that every student pays on admission. Clearly the university's management is more about collecting money than actually using the money for the funding of the clinic. This issue is particularly important and must be addressed as soon as possible.
A report on the health centre would be incomplete without speaking about the rude and sometimes unfair treatment of the attendants in the clinic especially the nurses in the emergency unit. The nurses there are unfriendly and rude to a level where one begins to regret been admitted at the clinic. Even visitors of patients can totally testify to this. On personal visit I've been chased out, shouted out and insulted for attempting to visit a friend at the clinic. Their repulsive attitude further helps in damaging their 'reputation '.
The university's clinic could be better in many ways if proper attention were paid to obvious areas of the clinic's managerial methods and the student's complain. Since a suggestion box outside the health centre refused to deliver messages across to the management's desk and frequent complaints to the health officers have been ignored I have taken it upon myself as a concerned student to report atleast few of the issues students have complained about. Hopefully this report gets to the concerned destinations.
©my vocalpen.