UBTH, NLNG inaugurate $500,000 ICU in Edo

The Management of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital and the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas have inaugurated a $500,000 15-bed Intensive Care Unit for patients seeking emergency care in Edo State.

Speaking at the launch of the unit on Tuesday in Benin City the Chief Medical Director of UBTH, Darlington Obaseki, said the project was part of the NLNG hospital support programme geared towards ameliorating healthcare challenges of patients in critical conditions.

Obaseki, who said the initiative was as a result of a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the NLNG, noted that it would complement the existing seven-bed ICU and cater to the hospital’s growing numbers of patients.

He said, “We are one of the busiest hospitals in this country. Every week, we see close to 6,000 patients; each week, we admit about 450 patients and we attend to about 430 emergencies in this every week.

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“This means that we are highly oversubscribed as a hospital which is an indication of the quality of services we offer. Unfortunately, over the years, we have only a seven-bedded ICU which is not adequate.

“So, when the opportunity came for us to benefit from this Nigeria LNG hospital support programme and they asked us to identify a problem, we remembered that we needed to open up a space to accommodate more physically ill patients. Then, we told them that we wanted our ICU to be upgraded and expanded. We are here today, thanks to the NLNG, to commission this,” Obaseki said.

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the NLNG Limited, Philip Mshelbila, said the hospital support programme was conceived on the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic so as to assuage the envisaged pressure that medical institutions would experience In managing ill patients.

“A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the NLNG and each teaching hospital to set out the framework for delivery of the project was signed in Abuja on the 24th January 2022. The programme consists of health intervention projects across 12 federal university teaching hospitals in six geopolitical zones of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT),” he said.