Coping with quack technicians in our hospitals

Dr. Biodun Ogungbo

Many years ago, we asked a plumber to fix the toilet in the house. The water cistern needed changing and we wanted a new bath to replace the old one. It was so old you could see images of all the people who had had a bath in it! Yeah, right!

Anyway, the plumber did a pretty bad job with a smile and the confidence that comes out of ignorance and total regard for the word quality. He even boasted that he had performed the job in over 50 houses, from old to new builds, over the past few years. Really? There must be at least 50 toilets that need replacing!

Another one could not set straight tiles and left cracked and broken tiles on the walls. When asked, he said it did not matter since he had used cement to seal the cracks. But, there are new unbroken tiles that could have replaced the broken ones, I said. How can someone not be proud to have performed a flawless job? Why is not bad, good enough for us in Nigeria?

Finally, one mechanic totally disabled the computer in a car after trying for days to correct a fault message from the system. So, because he could not solve the problem, he took out the computer wires. If you dont know there is a fault, you wont worry about it. Would you?

Whats going on in our hospitals?

This is no worse than what we face in hospitals. Hospital equipment cannot be repaired adequately by Nigerian technicians and engineers. You cannot trust many technicians to service expensive equipment to a high standard unless you want to replace stuff on a daily basis. Many are as stupid as muck and help to destroy equipment, ranging from even simple air conditioners, hospital beds to high-end specialist stuff.

Many hospitals have to abandon equipment or send them out of the country for repairs at huge costs. Not only do you pay for the cost of shipping and the repairs, you also pay custom duties on getting your equipment back. And its not cheaper to get a foreign technician to come to the country and repair your equipment here.

So, it winds me up no end when engineers come to the hospitals and complain about non-availability of equipment or some non-functioning gadget. We get so much disdain and incredulous looks when some equipment fails to work! Who are they to complain? What right have they got when they are totally unbelievably abysmal in their duties of maintaining simple equipment in the hospital? Dont they have any shame or feel a little bit responsible for the state of our hospitals? All theory and no practical experience! On-the-job training till they mess up your equipment?

Why not?

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Coping with quack technicians in our hospitals