The Chief Medical Director (CMD) of University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) Dr Thomas U. Agan, who is also the Chairman of Committee of Chief Executive of Tertiary Health Institutions has decried the non inclusion of Teaching/Tertiary Hospital in Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) regretting that the non-inclusion of these institutions has affected research work, provision of infrastructures, training needs and other activities.
On Thursday, while Addressing a Press Conference in Calabar, the CMD wondered why the proponents of the TETFUND did not considered it necessary to recognise Teaching/Tertiary Hospitals in Nigeria as Tertiary Institutions, “A Teaching hospital all over the World is considered as both a tertiary health institution as well as tertiary training institutions”
He regretted that the original advocates of the TETFUND did not consult widely or must have been engulfed in ignorance of the mandates of a teaching/tertiary hospital, “I therefore with due respect believe that either the original advocates of this noble idea of TETFUND did not consult widely or must have not been engulfed in ignorance of the mandates of a teaching/tertiary hospital”
“The Teaching hospitals are supposed to benefit from the activities of the fund considering their areas of coverage as stated in my preamble. The question now is, based on the mandates of the fund, can a teaching hospital be categorised under tertiary Institutions? The answer is yes, considering its mandates. How then can one juxtapose the mandates of the TETFUND and that of a hospital?”
“A careful inquisition into the teaching hospitals reconstitution of Boards, Cap 463, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 is therefore necessary” He regretted that the funding of tertiary health institutions has always come from yearly appropriations given to the institutions as predetermined envelopes by the federal government through the supervisory federal ministry of health.
Institutions according to him are required to share the contents of the envelopes to accommodate all their needs and it is known fact that no budgetary appropriation has ever been made for the training and research needs of the tertiary hospitals, “Institutions are expected to rely on their epileptic overheads allocations and their internally generated funds”
“Overhead allocation is part of the envelope that ranges between N2m-N11m monthly, if it comes at all. What constitute internally generated funds in tertiary hospitals include: Bed fee, consultation fee, some aspect of card fee, operation fee, rent and fee from boarded items. Others are principally, revolving funds (Drugs, theatre and ward consumables, laboratory consumables etc)”
He said that most tertiary health institution’s overhead allocation is unable to pay for monthly consumed public power supply to the institutions, talk less of paying for a truck load of diesel, serving backup generator sets as well as taking care of other subheads meant for the allocated overhead funds.
Thus, funding research and training in these tertiary health institutions has always been a major challenge which is one of the major causes of regular unrest in the tertiary health institutions in Nigeria and said that there was therefore an urgent need to look for an effective and efficient way to fund infrastructural development, training and research in our tertiary health institutions.
Dr Agan then called on the relevance agencies to amend the Act that established the TETFUND, he said that,“It is possible that formulators of the Act were not sufficiently informed at the time. It is however not late to address this pathetic situation. The Act should be amended to incorporate tertiary teaching hospitals. Thus Section 7(1) sub-section 3 of the Act says that, “The distribution of the Funds shall be in the ratio of 2:1.5:1:1 between university, tertiary hospital, polytechnic and college of Education”
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