Pregnant women and other patients fear dying in a hospital because the heath workers spend less than 15 hours a day at the facility in Damboa.

Bintu Mu’azu, a patient at Fato Sandi Hospital in the Damboa local government area, told RNI that doctors and nurses hade in the past month changed their work hours.

She said this affected all patients, but particularly pregnant women, who needed to visit the hospital for regular checkups.

She said that the absence of doctors in the night could lead to the death of pregnant women.

“If they start bleeding during labour there will be no one to help. We feel helpless. We see our friends suffering but there is nothing we can do because we are not health workers.

If we do try to help it could worsen the problem because we don’t know the right thing to do” Mu’azusaid: “Sometimes sit there crying and watching our friends suffer until the doctors arrive in the morning.”

Fatima Mohammed said the actions of the doctors and nurses had led to the “deaths of many women.”

She blamed health workers for the lack of medical attention.

Mohammed said there were no medicines in the hospital and that every time she had gone for treatment, health workers had told her there were no drugs.

“That is the reason many people have stopped going to the hospital,” she said.

She said it wasn’t just pregnant women who were suffering. “Even people with malaria don’t get help.”

The patients had urged the Borno State government and the ministry of health to find a lasting solution to their problems.

RNI reporter Fanna Usman had gone to see the hospital’s senior doctor but she refused to be interviewed.