It took over a month for Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), a state-owned hospital, to address the daily power outage that has plagued it since April.
LASUTH released a statement titled ‘Power Situation in LASUTH’ to express its powerlessness on Friday.
The state-run hospital said that it had had to prioritise power from generators to critical areas.
“For the 5th week running, the Independent Power Project company has [sic] not supplied power to LASUTH. As a result, the hospital has been running on generators,” LASUTH’s statement read in part.
“In order to ensure hitch-free operations of the generators, there has to be a shutdown at intervals. During these times, which incidentally has been made as short as possible, some inconveniences are experienced by our patients.
“As a responsible hospital management, we have to keep our services running, hence we must necessarily prioritise supply to critical areas. We hope that normalcy will soon be restored, but in the meantime, we appeal to our numerous patients to bear with us.”
Patients and hospital service beneficiaries had complained about the extended power outages at LASUTH since the first week of April. Hospital staff sometimes told people to come back later because they could not attend to their needs without power.
@Taururist, a Twitter user, could not get a genotype test result when it was due.
“Genotype test in LASUTH and, for over 24 hours, they said no light to do result …. LASUTH!!! As in Lagos state government hospital o… there is every need to gt*# of this country,” he tweeted on April 20.
READ ALSO: Atiku Abubakar: Why I Can’t Be Treated at a Nigerian Hospital
@_funmbi quoted a tweet from the Lagos State Government on April 13 to complain about the power outage at LASUTH.
@_Habeebah_ also tweeted at Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Governor of Lagos State, on April 30. None of the tweeps got a response.
About 12 hours after LASUTH tweeted its statement, the state government summarised the statement in a tweet.
The state government had not written an official statement to address the month-long LASUTH power outage at press time.
Subscribe
Be the first to receive special investigative reports and features in your inbox.