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Patient Cries Out: 'UCH Is The Home Of Mosquitoes'. Hospital Spokesman Asks: 'How Is That A Crime?'

“I took my father for treatment at University College Hospital and I realised that everywhere is full of mosquitoes: inside the wards where sick people are admitted, staff offices as well as administrative blocks... It is annoying when you come to take care of your sick people and they are going home with another ailment. Even the person that brought the sick patient will be going home with malaria."

Ayo Oluseye, a relative of one of the patients admitted at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Oyo State, has described the hospital as a breeding home for mosquitoes.

Oluseye said bad maintenance of the hospital has turned it into a home of malaria, with hospital patients now at risk of being infected with parasite.

Speaking with SaharaReporters, Oluseye said he took his father for treatment at the hospital but was surprised to be greeted by mosquitoes on arrival.

“I took my father for treatment at University College Hospital and I realised that everywhere is full of mosquitoes: inside the wards where sick people are admitted, staff offices as well as administrative blocks."

He described the hospital vicinity as unsafe, and lamented that the hospital management was not doing anything on it.

“It is annoying when you come to take care of your sick people and they are going home with another ailment. Even the person that brought the sick patient will be going home with malaria," Oluseye said.

“I was infuriated because the management of UCH is doing nothing about it. This situation is bad for the image of the hospital.”

He said patients and their relatives had resort to using mosquito nets to keep themselves safe. 

“Patients who can afford it are buying mosquitoe nets to prevent their relatives from malaria. I had to tell my brother to get mosquito net for my father.”

Oluseye urged the management of UCH to immediately fumigate the hospital to make it safe from mosquitoes.

He also tasked the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole to “pay a private visit to the hospital to see for himself what people are going through".

“The management of the hospital needs to do something about it," he said. "They can fumigate it to kill the mosquitoes or send them away, just to make the hospital environment safe from mosquitoes.”

When contacted, Mr. Toye Akinrinola, Head of Information Department of UCH, claimed that the presence of mosquitoes in the hospital should not be a matter to report as there are bound to be mosquitoes in an open space.

“If you are in an open space, won’t there be mosquito there,"? he said.

"What is the crime in that there are mosquitoes in UCH? If you get to the airport or market, won’t you find mosquito there?”

He continued: “You want me to say there are no mosquitoes there or if there are, what should I do about it?

“It’s like telling me when it's raining, it's falling in this place; it will not rain in another place.”

According to World Health Organization 2018 World malaria report, five countries accounted for nearly half of all malaria cases worldwide: Nigeria (25%), Democratic Republic of the Congo (11%), Mozambique (5%), India (4%) and Uganda (4%).

Also, the 10 highest burden countries in Africa reported increases in cases of malaria in 2017 compared with 2016. Of these, Nigeria, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo had the highest estimated increases, all greater than half a million cases.

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PUBLIC HEALTH