Management of the Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Aro, Abeokuta, Ogun State on Thursday declared that patients-on-admission at the facility will continue to pay high cost for treatments as long as the overhead allocation from the Federal Ministry of Finance remains inadequate to cater for her “huge expenditure burdens”.
Provost and medical director of the hospital, Dr. Paul Agboola stated this while addressing journalists at the facility’s annex located in Lantoro area of Abeokuta metropolis on some of the challenges facing the hospital which eventually snowballed into the resident doctors 3-days warning strike that ended last Saturday.
Agboola explained that management of the Aro Neuropsychiatric facility has continued to insure huge expenditure of which the overhead allocation from the Federal Government could no longer cater for.
He also disclosed that the hospital spends the sum of over N15 million as subsidy on feeding the patients-on-admission, while “a considerable proportion of the overhead allocation from the Federal Ministry of Finance are expended on part payment for diesel purchase monthly”.
Consequent upon this, Agboola explained that the hospital’s management was compelled to initiate “several innovations that would make the facility increase her Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) with the support of the federal government “.
“This is to ensure that we continue to meet our huge expenditure burdens in the face of insufficient funds. For the past four years, all our patients in the hospital including the Lantoro annex had their feeding fee subsidized to the tune of over N15 Million on monthly bases. This became unsustainable given the current economic realities in the country and has led to unavailable but realistic slight increases in hospital fees which are largely borne by patients’ relatives”.
Commenting on the brutality matted out on the personnel of the facility during a violent protest experienced in the hospital last week Wednesday, Agboola explained that only two Psychiatric Doctors on duty were assaulted by the rampaging inpatients and were later made to write statements with the police operatives that raised to the scene, stressing that none of the nurses was affected in the violent protest.
