The Medical Director of Amuwo Odofin Maternal and Childcare Centre, Dr Dapo Soyinka, has called on both private and public hospitals to imbibe good maintenance culture, for better health outcomes.
He made the call on Wednesday in Lagos, while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the medical equipment the hospital received from the Rotary Club.
Soyinka said there could never be too much equipment in a hospital, rather the issue should be how to maintain the available equipment.
Citing incubators as an example, he explained that they could develop fault that could sometimes require replacement.
“There’s hardly any public facility that you see that doesn’t have incubators but the problem is that quite a number of them are no longer working.
“You may have 10 incubators, it goes down to six functional incubators, then four; you’ve got to replace them.
“So at a time you try to cannibalise, for example if you have three not working and then your smart engineer comes, removes this part from here and put it there for it to work,” he explained.
Soyinka then explained that repairing incubators may not be the solution because they are sensitive.
He narrated an incidence of a baby, who died after being placed in an incubator assumed to be fixed and working well.
“It’s temperature dependent, temperature sensitive.
“So if the control is not there, the temperature keeps going up and the baby can’t talk nor yell,” he added.
