Mike Ikhariale
On Monday, July 1, 2014, the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, the umbrella organisation under which medical doctors in the country are unionised to promote the common interests of their members and the medical profession generally, embarked on a strike action that it described as both “total” and “indefinite.”
As much as I do not support the frequent disruptive outcomes of strikes in this country, given the dire straits in which the nation’s health care delivery system has found itself, I am “totally” and “indefinitely” in support of the strike. It is not normal for professionals like doctors to walk out of hospitals with patients dying unattended to but if only to limit the casualties in the long run, then, this action as unpalatable as it is, becomes inevitable.
In any case, it is almost turning a way of life in Nigeria that until a dispute, economic or political, gets to a boil at which point combatants resort to the most unorthodox and deadliest of strategies, government does not see reason to respond civilly and promptly to such demands. The result has been that key institutions of states like universities and hospitals are perpetually placed under lock and key just to make the most elementary of demands noticed and responded to accordingly.
I am particularly alarmed by the decadence that the nation’s medical institutions and facilities have fallen into. The other day, gory and shameful photos of the decadence that has befallen LUTH, a premier health institution where doctors and other professionals in the medical industry are supposed to be trained and mentored for the need of the medical needs of the country, were published to the astonishment of many. The decadence at LUTH is replicated all across the country with the situation progressively worsening as you move away from the urban centres to the rural communities.
The NMA has catalogued what it considers as wrong with our hospitals and medical professions; it listed the longstanding underfunding of health institutions and the demonstrable low attention paid to medical personnel by the government. It also drew specific attention to their professional dissatisfaction with the non-recognition of the profession in key positions in government.
I don’t see anything too impossible in what they are asking for. Even the more economic ones like their call for the increment of hazard allowance to N100, 000 monthly and the establishment of a health trust fund that will enhance the upgrading of all hospitals in the country are not too much. In view of the annoying undeserved opulence regularly displayed by our “Excellencies”, their wives and aides, the amount the doctors are asking for contextually pales into chicken feed.
There is nothing more indicative about how disdainful our leaders treat our doctors and the medical facilities in this country than the fact that it has become the fad that once a member of the nation’s elite class develops any medical condition, be it common cold or the serious ones like cancer, the only possible destination is outside Nigeria.
Whether it is the President of the Republic, his wife and family or a private individual eking out a living somewhere, all medical challenges must now be taken abroad as if there is an official conclusion that our hospitals are now no-go areas. The majority of Nigerians that fly out of the country daily are actually going for medical treatment. Whenever there is a medical problem, the first thing that comes to their minds is how to get out of the country. Yet we are supposed to have hospitals manned by men and women who are well-trained in the various fields of medical practice.
The other day I was discussing a running nose with an academic colleague and he told me that I shouldn’t just take it as a common cold as had been casually diagnosed by “our doctors” and that I should proceed immediately to South Africa. Right there inside his car he put a call across to South Africa and in a jiffy I was speaking with a medical person who clearly laid out a whole range of possibilities towards resolving my problem.
I was impressed by the professionalism exhibited and when I compared the information I got from just a telephone conversation with my earlier physical visit to an hospital in Lagos, it was already clear to me that the long-distant conversation had addressed my needs as against the dismissive “Prof, you alright and there is nothing wrong with you” that I got here even when my nose was dripping like a tap. The fellow I spoke to in Pretoria probably attended the same medical school with the one I visited in Lagos but it was obvious that while one was working with antiquated and obsolete tools the other was taking full advantage of science and technology in their latest forms.
In many respects, anyone who truly loves himself must think twice before submitting his body to medical processes in this country. If he is not scared about the likelihood of power failure at critical moments in the treatment regime, it could just be the possible absence of water or other elementary medical materials like bandages and needles at critical stages. It is really that bad. But how did we get to that abysmal level of degeneration?
The simple answer is that our leaders have failed woefully to fund our health infrastructure and diligently take care of the personnel manning them. The working environment of Nigerian doctors is at best antediluvian and, indeed, hellish. I once visited a private hospital as I have been warned to avoid government ones if I love my life. I was shocked to find the doctors there sharing one blood pressure measuring machine in turn. They were running in and out of their rooms to fetch the only functioning machine. I was heartbroken and almost walked out in disgust.
Just because Nigerian political leaders and their cronies have illegitimate access to public money with which they regularly fly abroad for medical treatment, they have decided to kill our hospitals and frustrate their workers. When it suits them, they indecently compare themselves with great leaders like Obama and Cameron; they flying around the world rubbing shoulders with them. Have they ever asked themselves if there will ever be any situation that will make leaders Obama and Putin come to Nigeria for medical checkup or treatment even for a tropical disease like malaria?
Little wonder therefore that nearly all the rich and powerful citizens of Nigeria who have died lately have all “passed away” abroad usually in India, South Africa, England and the USA. I think it is shameful that our leaders are now dying outside the shores of this country because whenever their cases go critical, the only thought worthy of consideration is to fly them out. Apart from the huge financial outlays involved (more than what the NMA is asking for), it is also an indication of a failed state when it is taken as the norm that the health facilities within cannot provide the most elementary of medical services.
Dying abroad is neither edifying nor prestigious. It is laughable to those in whose lands we now go to die. How many foreigners come to Nigeria to die? Not even from Benin Republic or Togo! To solve this problem once and for all, I expect that our doctors to remain steadfast in their demands through strikes and/or other non-strike means until our hospitals are good enough for both the rich and the poor. Docs, it’s Aluta Continua!
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