Antenatal: Pregnant women continue to increase amidst fewer health personnel

Pregnant women attending hospitals in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) continue to increase as health personnel struggle to attend to them.

A visit to some public hospitals revealed that there were more women to be attended to by the nurses as against the rule of one nurse to four women.

At Kuje General Hospital, there were over 100 mothers-to-be but with only three nurses to attend to them on most antenatal clinic days.

One of the nurses, who craved anonymity, said they were trying their best to attend to the pregnant women, adding that more manpower and health facilities were needed for effective management of the teeming population of pregnant women.

“We start attending to them as early as 7.00am on ante-natal day which is every Thursday, and even though the pregnant women attend in large numbers, we finish attending to them well by past 1.00 pm. We are trying our best but if we have more hands, it will help us a lot,” she said.

She, however, added that the large crowd had reduced compared to the number they had to handle in the past.

“We didn’t charge them for anything in the past but each person now pays N500 for registration.

“You can see we have over 100 of them here now. And they will all be attended to. We give them health talk and also test them. At times people think we are slow in attending to them, but we are not, it is because we have few hands attending to so many people,” she said.

“Normally, a nurse is supposed to attend to four pregnant women but if you go inside you will see the number of pregnant women there and we are just three attending to them, with a nurse most times attending to 50 women,” the nurse explained.

She also said they have a very large area to cover since this is the only hospital around apart from Gwagwalada.

“We need manpower and good facilities to be able to attend to them well. Women come from communities around Kuje and some come from as far as Giri, Gosa to attend ante-natal here,” she said.

She said the ante-natal ward needs a facelift for good services.

One of the pregnant women who gave her name as, Mrs. Osas Pauline, said she has not encountered any problem since she started attending ante-natal there .

She added that in spite of the large number of women in attendance, the health officials attend to them well.

Another attendee, Mrs. Cythia Raymon, said during her two previous pregnancies everything was free including registration but that it appeared the economic situation in the country has also affected the hospital as they now charge N500 registration fee. This she said that was still okay by her.

One of the nurses at Wuse District Hospital who spoke to our reporter on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorised to speak to the press, said the hospital had to contend with a large number of pregnant women every Friday, which is its antenatal clinic day.

She added that the clinic started as early as possible and they always encouraged newly registered women to come very early so that they can be attended to on time.

Mrs. Oluwole Hannah who attends antenatal at the Gwarimpa General Hospital said she goes there early on ante-natal clinic days because getting to the hospital late meant there would be a delay in seeing the doctor.

She said she never wasted time in the hospital because she arrived there early enough to be attended to and goes back to her work place.

All efforts to get the reactions of the management and spokespersons of the mentioned hospitals failed.

When our reporter visited Wuse District Hospital, the hospital secretary, was said to be on leave, but an official said no staff was authorized to speak on any matter concerning the hospital.

“Even if the secretary is around, she does not have the right to speak on any matter, not even the medical director. You must officially write to the Health and Human Services Secretariat and it is only when they authorize that we can attend to such.”

Our reporter was also at the Kuje General Hospital twice but was unable to speak to either the medical director or the secretary as both were said not to be available.

All efforts to get the response of the Health and Human Services Secretariat on the issue failed as at press time.