Kelvin Chan
This May through July, I had the privilege of working with a team of scholars at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, henceforth referred to as ABUTH, in Zaria, Nigeria, under the auspices of the Population and Reproductive Health Partnership (PRHP), as a Bixby Fellow. In addition to training the ABUTH fellows in ethnographic research techniques, I was also helping them develop their own research by helping them refine their field notes so that they are in the position to write academic papers based on their field work. I also conducted my own field observations, with a special focus on the provision of obstetric and emergency obstetric care, at Kofan Gayan Hospital, the largest secondary hospital in Kaduna State. I will spend the bulk of this report describing my observations of the hospital, and how describe how the barriers – both internal and external to the organization – present a formidable situation that makes the provision of timely and effective healthcare services for all of its patients impossible.