Kaduna 300-Bed Hospital: 4 Facts Missing in Sahara Reporters Story
By Naja’atu Abubakar Rafinguza
Sahara Reporters story about the state-of-the-art hospital commissioned by the President is flawed in four(4)ways.
No serious hospital anywhere on earth swings into instant functionality the day after ribbon-cutting. Let’s look at the four(4) examples similar to the Kaduna experience with this project that Sahara Reporters missed out.
Number One: Consider the National Hospital, Abuja. Commissioned in May 1999 by former Head of State Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, the hospital did not admit its first set of patients until 2000—almost a year later. Why? Because equipment calibration, recruitment of consultants, and regulatory approvals take time. Nobody described it as “abandoned”; it was understood as part of the operationalization process.
Number Two: Take the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Cancer Centre. Though completed in 2018 and ceremonially unveiled with fanfare in 2019, it only became fully operational the following year. Advanced machines like radiotherapy bunkers and linear accelerators required months of installation and safety checks before patient access was allowed.
Number three? Globally, the story is the same. The Royal Liverpool University Hospital in the United Kingdom, commissioned in 2017, did not welcome patients until 2022. The delay—five years—was due to the intricacies of installing highly specialized systems. Yet no one in Britain called it abandonment; they called it due diligence.
Number four: In India, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhopal, was inaugurated in 2012 but only became fully operational with all departments years later. Even in the United States, facilities like the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center underwent phased rollouts after major reconstruction before achieving full operational status.
These examples underscore a basic fact: for a hospital of Kaduna’s magnitude—300 beds, specialist units, advanced equipment—6 to 12 months of structured post-commissioning transition is the global norm. Recruitment of specialists, staff orientation, equipment testing, and accreditation must precede the first patient’s admission. Anything less would be reckless and endanger lives.
To therefore label Kaduna’s hospital “abandoned” just two months after commissioning is not only false, it is irresponsible journalism. By global standards, the hospital is exactly where it should be—moving through the technical and staffing phase that every serious hospital in the world undergoes before becoming fully functional.
Sahara Reporters may thrive on sensational headlines, but facts remain stubborn: Kaduna’s Millennium City Hospital is in transition, not in decay. History and global examples prove it. The real abandonment here is not of a hospital, but of truth in reporting.
