At least eight private hospitals in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, have shut down because of the hike in electricity tariff.
This development has become a cause of concern for the Guild of Medical Directors.
The Guild said besides the high cost of electricity consumption, other issues affecting private hospitals negatively are multiple taxations, brain drain, high cost of importation of medical equipment, and hike in drug prices.
The GMD raised these issues
during a press briefing at the end of the guild’s 2024 National Annual General Meeting, themed, ‘From Profession to Industry Practice in a VUCA Environment’, held in Lagos.
Speaking at the event, the GMD’s National President, Dr Raymond Kuti, said” The environment for the health business is very volatile now. It is very uncertain, very complex, and very ambiguous.
“We have restrictive policies, which are not making the needed access to healthcare to be available.
“These restrictive policies involve multiple taxations and then, we are having issues with the cost of running our hospitals due to an increase in the cost of medications and the other consumables.”
Lamenting further, he said, “The most important one now is power supply. I can tell you now that we have hospitals that are using at least close to N25 million a month to generate power and that is tough for hospitals.
“That is just to generate power and of course, the policy of dollarisation of most of our consumables is impacting the running of hospitals.”
He said: “Also the accessibility for the allocated funds for health, we are having difficulty accessing those funds. The government has put funds there for hospitals to have access to, but unfortunately, we are having issues accessing those allocated funds. Then, we also have a problem of insecurity.”
“Now some of the hospitals in the north have closed down. Not that they don’t want to work there, not that they can’t do it but we were closed down due to these challenges.
“In Maiduguri, at least six to eight private hospitals have closed down and that is just because of these challenges we have mentioned.
“Then the japa syndrome is also affecting the private hospitals”.
