BFF Highlights Dilemma of A. M. Dogliotti Medical Students; Craves GOL, Stakeholders’ Urgent Intervention

MONROVIA: Minutes after the White-Coat ceremony, in honor of 29 first-year students for academic 2024-2025, into the Achille Mario Dogliotti College of Medicine and Health Sciences of the state-owned University of Liberia, a mysterious fire outbreak occurred, which led to the damage of one of the two dormitories on the campus of the medical college, situated in Fendell, Louisiana, outside Monrovia.

The incident which happened on Saturday, 13^th, July, 2024, effectively created panic among students and other staffs of the medical college, causing some of them to run helter-skelter for safety as others horridly departed the college campus with their personal belongings.

Rev. Augustine Arkoi, Chief Executive Officer of the Better Future Foundation, BFF, who participated in the White-Coat ceremony held recently on the UL medical college campus expressed shock and disdain over the fire incident.

Rev. Arkoi who is also a noted civil society activist disclosed that the fire outbreak has seriously impacted the learning conditions of the first-year medical students, referred as, DONATUS, meaning the GIFTED ONES.

The BFF President, while calling for a thorough investigation as it relates to the cause of the fire outbreak also calls on the Government of Liberia, GoL, international development partners and other educational stakeholders to quickly intervene by repairing the damaged facilities of the medical college including broken windows and doors and the restoration of the electrical wiring system on the college campus.

The BFF CEO, at the same time, decried the deprived learning conditions faced by students of the Achille Mario Dogliotti College of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UL.

Rev. Arkoi also disclosed that students, including males and females are learning without much-needed accessibility to electricity, pure and safe drinking water, as well as adequate security personnel to safeguard the college campus, which is located along the Fendel-Bensonville Road in Louisiana, a suburb of Monrovia, Montserrado County.

In a statement issued in Monrovia, BFF outlined a chain of other tedious challenges being experienced by the medical students including inadequate staffing, infrastructure, logistics, broken doors and windows, limited classrooms, unsanitary campus environment, gross lack of medical research materials and contemporary medical equipment, acute lack of housing facilities, among others.

A civil society advocacy organization, BFF also expressed scorn and discontent that the A.M. Dogliotti College of Medicine, founded in the early and mid-1960s by former President William V.S. Tubman as a concept for Liberia to train its own medical doctors is currently awash by multiple challenges that need to be urgently addressed by Central Government, with the support of other stakeholders and ensure much-needed conducive learning environment at the College.

To date, the medical college experiences operational bottlenecks just as in previous years with very limited housing infrastructures that require expansion and upgrade aimed at placing the nation’s premium medical college on par with other medical colleges in the West African sub-region and beyond.

Bill Harris, leader of the A. M. Dogliotti College of Medicine and Health Sciences students Association, when contacted recently by BFF on the Fendel campus of the College, acknowledged and affirmed the deplorable state under which more than 96 students are learning at the college.

Student leader Harris also underscored the need and the significance for rapid intervention by government in ameliorating the gloomy learning situation at the state-own medical college.

The edifices situated at the Fendell campus of the A. M. Dogliotti College and in Congo Town require renovation and upgrade to improve the learning atmosphere in the college.

Mr. Arkoi stressed that the prevailing learning atmosphere at the college has the potential to severely impact the high desire of students for higher education and to effectively compete with their medical and academic peers abroad.

BFF also disclosed that it has gathered that almost every Liberian doctor in the country successfully studied at the College.

Before the Liberian civil war that lasted more than a decade, the A. M. Dogliotti Medical College graduated about 40 medical practitioners a year, after successfully completing course length of 9 years.

However, the current Course Length of the College, after a thorough review by leading medical professionals has been expertly abridged to seven years with students now required to spend about two years in pre-clinical study, six years in medical schoolwork, and additional one year for therapeutic internship or practicum at any state-assigned hospital or medical center in the country.

The medical school is, at the moment, faced with a severe staff shortage because so many of Liberia’s doctors have left the country, BFF said in its assessment statement.

Access to internet, adequate and satisfactory dormitories, and other basic facilities that enhance learning remains a race to the top of the mountain, said BFF President Augustine Arkoi.

It may be recalled that few years ago, the Government of Liberia, through the Ministry of Health reported that there are 130 doctors practicing in Liberia, 51 of whom are Liberian nationals.

The report added, then, that most of A.M. Dogliotti’s alumni fled the country during the country’s back-to-back armed conflict that spanned over a decade.

Also, according to the erstwhile Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission, TRC, that investigated the factors, causes, and antecedents of the brutal armed conflict in Liberia, an estimated 250,000 persons, predominately women, children, and the elderly were killed, and more than a million others internally and externally displaced, while the Nation’s economy, which was abysmally destroyed during the conflict is yet to recover to its pre-war state.

“Those doctors who are still here are more than needed by the Liberian health system,” said the Health Ministry report, then.

“We have over three million people in this country and many of us, including myself, cannot afford to go abroad for healthcare. It is our responsibility as a country to have a good health system. We can’t afford to have a country full of sick people and expect them to be productive,” Dr. Tabeh L. Freeman, then, acting Dean and Associate Professor of the A. M. Dogliotti College of Medicine and Health Sciences, on June 2, 2009, told the Senate’s Committee on Gender, Health and Social Welfare.

At the time, Dr. freeman said, the medical school was in a deplorable state with looming difficulties.

The A. M. Dogliotti College of Medicine and Health Sciences was formerly called the Monrovia-Torino   College of Medicine and subsequently merged with the University of Liberia as the seventh academic program, and the second professional school (the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, being the first professional school.

Another report quoted the Liberia Medical and Dental Council as disclosing, few years ago, that there are 298 medical doctors responsible for the country’s over 4.5 million population, making the doctor per patient ratio 1:15,000.

However, the figure is still far from the 1:1,000 doctor to patient ratio recommended by the World Health Organization.

The field of specialty is limited at A.M. Dogliotti College of Medicine.

The LMDC statistics, updated on July 2015, indicated that there are 207 general practitioners – 18 Public Health Specialists, 15 Pediatricians, 12 Surgeons, 10 Gynecologists, 6 Ophthalmologists, 8 Internal Medicine Specialists, 6 Dentists, 4 Family Medicine Specialists and 2 Orthopedics.

Liberia also has two radiologists, one pathologist, four psychiatrists, one ear, and throat specialist, one veterinarian, and one dermatologist, LMDC statistics further indicated.

BFF has gathered during its recent assessment of the medical college that currently, Dr. Anthony S. Quayee Sr., is the only full-Time Professor in the Pre-Clinical Division of the College.

It was also discovered that amid the acute shortage of staffers faced by the college, some full-time staffers, contracted by the World Bank are immensely contributing to the learning process of students of the College by teaching a number of courses including Medical Physiology, Anatomy, Pathology and Medical Biochemistry, while Prof. Nnezi, MD, a Peace Corp Volunteer, is also impacting valuable knowledge into the students of the College.

At least six staffers, each of whom had earned a Master’s degree, from a number of world-class universities are also teaching various crucial courses, with the UL being fully responsible for their professional services.

The expertise of three additional medical specialists have also been enlisted into the Department of Laboratory Medicine while four others are teaching in the Department of Pharmacology, although without pay, for reason not given.

Nevertheless, BFF strongly calls on the Central Government, headed by President Joseph Nyuma Boakai,   to provide increased logistical and budgetary support to the A. M. Dogliotti College of Medicine and Health Sciences, which the Foundation says remains the nation’s premium medical college and a reservoir of medical knowledge as Liberia strives for the resuscitation of its war, EBOLA and COVID-19 affected healthcare sector.

Dr. Lekilay Tehmeh of the LMDC, few years back, attributed the cause of the poor doctor to patient ratio in Liberia to the civil war, saying the turmoil caused most of the doctors to immigrate to other countries.

“The salaries here are bad. There are no incentives. For years, our doctors have left for the glitz and glamour of the First World, “That’s why we have a dysfunctional health-care system,” he said, then.

The Medical College was added to the University of Liberia in 1968, and was opened in a partnership between Italy’s A.M. Dogliotti Foundation and the government of Liberia. The School of Pharmacy is also at the medical school.

Meanwhile, BFF has recommended that the Liberian authorities take the following immediate actions to guarantee the safety and wellbeing of medical students and other personnel of the medical college:

1. Increase security personnel to prevent intrusion, burglary and other criminal activities on the college campus
2. Restore electrical wiring system
3. Install mental or iron doors to the main entrances of the medical dormitories
4. Construct water reservoir so as to prevent the risk of students from going out of the campus in search of safe and pure drinking water
5. Reconstruct the main medical dormitory which played host to about 80 % of the medical students that was, three years ago, demolished
6. And that the A.M. Dogliotti College of Medicine be granted financial autonomous status to ensure effective operational independence.

 

Signed: _______________
BFF Secretariat