By Offong Umoh Offong
If a statement credited to a San Francisco journalist, Herbert Eugene Caen is anything to go by, then the recent development at the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital UUTH is a sign of good things to come.
The late Columnist had once said that a city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.
In a bid to improve its finances and create goodwill to tackle lots of its responsibilities, the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital recently inaugurated a committee to nurture that vision.
Code-named The Business Development Team, the committee intends to serve as a lobby group for the hospital and actively collaborate with stakeholders to develop the organization.
The committee derives its strength from the federal government’s National Strategic Health Development Plan which specifies collaborations as a prominent strategy to achieve health for all.
Indeed, the place of vision as a forerunner to action has been underscored by Dalai Lama in his declaration that in order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.
But since it is just logical that the said vision without action is merely a dream; that vision without action just passes the time, but vision with action is the thing that changes a situation, the body has swung into action.
Armed with this mandate, the body craves for private sector intervention and has, accordingly call for all and sundry to come to the aid of the hospital since government cannot do it alone.
The place of cooperation in achieving a goal has been underscored when a US Presidential hopeful, Hilary Clinton said you cannot have development in today’s world without partnering with the private sector.
The good side of this idea is that the goodwill, finances and all that would accrue, would go beyond benefitting the hospital to also taking care of the less-privilege patrons of the hospital.
Unfortunately, some would dismiss the initiative, claiming that they don’t seem to know how it would benefit them, yet, they had better learnt from a US social philosopher and cultural critic, William Irwin Thompson who has cautioned that the World is not an ideology nor a scientific institution, nor is it even a system of ideologies; rather, it is a structure of unconscious relations and symbiotic processes.
One may think one is not benefiting, yet, before you know it, one is overwhelmed with such benefits.
The committee’s main areas of concern would be on infrastructure, capacity building and human resource development.
It would also carry out a systematic attitudinal re-orientation through training and re-training for the entire hospital community including staff and clients or patients.
Actually, UUTH and those behind the initiative should be commended because, they have lived up to the belief that leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
In the process, they are also concurring Woodrow Wilson’s postulation that you are not here merely to make a living, but you are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement; and that you are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
As it stands, it is also appropriate to echo Leroy Hood’s advice that members of this committee should not underestimate the power of their vision to change the world; that whether that world is your office, your community, an industry or a global movement, you need to have a core belief that what you contribute can fundamentally change the paradigm or way of thinking about problems.
Again, they should be informed that translating a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn’t happen overnight, but takes some more effort.
