I turn my attention to the ailing Health Sector of Nigeria today in continuation of my x-ray of the critical areas the incoming administration in Nigeria scheduled to be inaugurated on May 29 should look into.
Health is one major area every national government should pay very close attention to. Like Defense, Foreign Policy and the Economy, Health is one of the major responsibilities of the Federal Government anywhere in the world. The sorry story of the Nigerian health sector dates back to decade ago. During the military intervention of General Muhammadu Buhari on 31st December, 1983, he described our hospitals as "mere consulting clinics". 20 months later, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida still described it "as still consulting clinics". Nearly 30 years after those critical analysis were made of our health sector, the situation has deteriorated and our hospitals are no longer consulting clinics but death chambers! This assessment may be a hard knot to crack for people who are eternally patriotic and blind at doing so. But, whoever has a reading eye should pay close attention to the plight of the real Nigerian.
Over the last 20 years, private hospitals sprang up across the nation because the government hospitals became real death chambers! Like in the education sector, the private clinics were like a rescue mission but the reality is that it is way out of the reach of the ordinary Nigerian because they charge high consulting fees! Over time, their services also began to dwindle in quality as they were constantly overwhelmed with patients since government hospitals now exist only in names.
I had nasty experiences on three occasions when I lost three children on the day of their births and government hospitals were culpable. Many excuses were adduced but there cannot be a good enough explanation for allowing three consecutive still births by one woman without locating the real reason for the phenomenon! God just saved the life of the mother otherwise she would have gone the way of her babies!
Besides having the latest hospital equipment in place which appears to be the emphasis of the Federal Health Ministry in most of its gigantic Teaching Hospitals where they teach nothing; the people who run the system are some of the most callous human beings one can find anywhere. Imagine a pregnant woman being literarily verbally abused by a nurse who should help her in the delivery room! At one time I in company of a friend had to trek a distance of over 1 kilometer within the precinct of a Teaching Hospital to get blood from their blood bank for transfusion for my baby because one of the nurses who should run the errand was feeling "sleepy"! Of course, because of the delay in the transfusion of the blood, we lost the baby by noon the next day!
There are hundreds and thousands of cases of mismanaged situations in the health sector. Doctors don't keep to surgery schedules, patients are kept waiting and bills running for days... and in many cases, when deposits for consultancy and treatments are not made, the patients even in emergency situations are left to fate! Health Insurance? Nigeria has a Health Insurance by the name of National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) which took off a little over 6 years ago. It only covers a small percentage of the population and this is less than 20% of the population. Some of the compliant clinics of NHIS are still grappling with the technicalities of how the scheme runs and the end users who are the Nigerians suffer in the process.
Primary Health Care is in shambles at the local level. In my native village, there are two "clinics" but run by quacks! They are untrained medical practitioners! They just operate on guess work and treat innocent villagers who submit their lives as it were to them. Health Inspectors? That appears to be a strange phenomenon around this part of the world. Nobody checks anything... and when it is done, it is bedeviled by bureaucratic idiosyncrasies that amount to nothing at the end of the day. The sorry state of dispensaries set up to score cheap political gains litter all around the country with no sufficient and effective dispensation of medical services.
The wealth of Health Workers is another bane of the woes of the Health Sector in Nigeria. Little wonder that Nigeria is amongst the highest exporter of medical practitioners in the world. Brain drain in this sector is massive year in year out. Constant strike actions by the Medical Union in the country is a further testimony to the fact that they are not treated well.
The buck rests squarely at the feet of the Federal Government led by the President and Commander-in-Chief. It is incumbent on President Jonathan to take a critical look at the Health Sector and appoint a radical minded Health Minister who is a thoroughbred professional and not a medical politician. He should recruit same-minded bureaucrats who will do a complete review of the health policy nationwide and come up with proactive and workable panacea that should restore sanity in the health sector and give the needed relief to the Nigerian.
Most Nigerians die needlessly because of poor health. Many of them cannot afford the basic health care. Drug peddlers who have no business being in health business should be swept away. This task is huge but the lives of millions of Nigerians are at stake and this government cannot fail in giving us a revamped health sector.
God Bless Nigeria.
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