THE SUCCESS STORY OF FMC YENAGOA By Evans Tubonah

Dr. Dennis Allagoa
Chief Medical Director, FMC YENAGOA

The Medical Director of the Federal Medical Centre, (FMC) Yenagoa, Dr. Dennis Alagoa has attributed the success of the Hospital to team work.
He stated this during an interview with newsman who called on him in his office in the State capital, Yenagoa.
According to him:
" The provision of services for health all over the world is always a daunting challenge; especially in the third world where issues of poor infrastructure, issues of poverty, issues of unavailability of light and water and also provision of skilled manpower. This had always been a challenge in the developing countries, and Nigeria is not an exception."
He said the FMC, Yenagoa, also faces such challenges, but one thing that had made the success story possible is:
"Co-operating Management team that has been working in unison and also we have the support of the government of Bayelsa State that helped us to provide the enabling environment to carry out the assignment that the government through the Honourable Minister of Health has given to us."
Secondly he said, apart from the commitment of management, majority of the staff of the Federal Hospital, are being committed to that team spirit of success, to ensure that they do there best to provide 'health for all in Bayelsa state, because Federal Medical Centre provides more than 80% and sees more than 80% of the total patients, population in this state cutting across the senatorial constituencies in the state.
He explained that on assumption in office his priority was to work on environmental sanitation, to which end a waste disposal system was provided with a view to ensuring that dumping of refuse by the road was stopped forthwith, hear this:
''....we provided a waste management system where we clear our wastes at regulated time,.. our medical wastes. We dispose the wastes using our own incinerator.."
Dr. Alagoa went further to say that, the hospital is looking forward to extend this service across the state, because it worked in keeping the environment of the FMC clean, he emphasized.
Another thing the hospital did was that the issue of lack of consumables in the theatre, especially because at the moment the new M.D. came on board, that was a challenge.
The M.D. said there were cases of consumables and materials needed to operate in the theatre, and to achieve that, they ensured the provision of such materials that were needful for theatre usage, and also other materials needed for the work of the hospital.

He spoke of some of the innovations made in these words:
"Another thing we did was to establish the intensive care unit, prior to that time  the building was there, but it was not yet functioning; we had to establish our own intensive care unit. We no longer refer intensive care patients to UPTH. We are now taking care of these patients in our centre here.
"We also established our operating eye theatre , previously we didn't operate people with eye challenges...; but now people who have eye challenges, we take care of them here in the Federal Medical Centre. We also went ahead to establish the National Health Insurance Scheme, a new Centre of National Insurance scheme here in FMC, Yenagoa."
Dr. Allagoa said there was an existing Insurance scheme that needed upgrading, and it was upgraded, and now working hundred percent. Explaining further he said:-
"All staff both here in Yenagoa and Otueke outreach are all enrolled under that scheme. And issues that will border on difficulty for people to provide funds to take care of themselves when they had health challenges no longer exist..."
He went further, describing the insurance scheme as robust raising the income from N1million per month to N10million per month, and now N12million per month.
The secret of success of our insurance scheme is that:
"We have a robust team of skilled, dedicated manpower that is providing 24 hours 7 days a week services, humane, a none stop, sure facility national health insurance scheme."
The Medical Director also spoke on a special medical unit at the FMC, Yenagoa:-
" A telemedicine unit, which is very important because it enables FMC Yenagoa, as the only hospital that has that unit in this country. to gather every Wednesday 5pm ... linking up with all the telemedicine units across the world, discussing various vital topics..."
He used the medium to highlight more of the functions of telemedicine  in these how they delibrate on medical topics and find solutions in these words:-
"The last topic we discussed was monkey pox. Doctors at telemedicine units
all over the world were part of that discussion. And we were able to educate them on what we did ...to contain the monkey pox scourge, and the approaches we used to contain the monkey pox in Bayelsa state."
He went further to say that the telemedicine unit also enables typical diagnosis by consulting with partners abroad directly for difficult cases, by calling and consulting partners of their opinion, and they discuss online,  through which method, they were able to resolve some of the medical cases, he explained.
"And we were able to resolve some of our medical cases. It enables you be in touch with socialists all over the world, and that is one of the things that the telemedicine has helped us to achieve and it has a lot of advantages  that we cannot enumerate in a single discussion as this,,," he concluded.

Inside the FMC at a glance