The Chief Medical Director of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Prof. Saad Ahmed, has called on the Federal Government to increase the budgetary allocation for the hospital to improve health services and enhance health security in the country. Speaking at the commissioning of the hospital’s ultra-modern administrative complex recently, Saad thanked the government and other stakeholders. He also said that the hospital could work towards other service provisions with the provision of additional land space, such as the expansion of emergency units, trauma centres, radiotherapy, nuclear medicine services, and other high-end medical care.
According to Saad, the hospital requires some necessary medical and support equipment to improve patient care, such as the 1.5 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging machine, computers, networking equipment, a new 128-slice CT Scan machine, and high-end neurosurgical and ear, nose and throat equipment. He, therefore, appealed to the government to increase the budgetary provision to the facility, adding that addressing these challenges could improve medical services and enhance health security within and beyond Abuja.
The Minister of State for Health, Ekumankama Nkama, also noted that the ultra-modern administrative complex will enhance the capacity and motivation of the administrative staff, heads of department, and clinical consultants. He further said that the building would improve the accreditation of post-graduate training for the clinical departments.
Nkama also listed some other great achievements of the Medical Centre, which included the provision of highly-specialised healthcare services such as open-heart surgery, laser operations, spine surgery, the introduction of new services in the fertility centre such as oocyte freezing, peri-implantation gamete testing, significant infrastructural projects such as the construction of a state-of-the-art intensive care unit, a 40 bedded negative pressure isolation centre, and a Dialysis Unit out of an existing female ward extension. Others were improved hospital manpower through capacity-building training of all staff to improve efficiency, expansion of the training programmes and accreditation by the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, enhanced research activities through the creation of research groups, and annual research awards from the hospital’s administration. This led to the Federal Medical Centre Abuja being named the best public-owned hospital in the Commonwealth Nations and the Medical Director, Prof Saad Ahmed, emerging as Health Advocate of the Year.
The reports that the ultra-modern administrative complex was named after the wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari. With these developments, the FMC Abuja is set to provide improved medical services and enhance health security in Nigeria and beyond.
