The NIgerian health system has failed a lot of Nigerians. Many Nigerians have died because of some ridiculous reasons, from lack of medicines, wrongful administration of drugs, no fuel in generator to perform emergency surgeries, inability to pay, oh the list goes on and on.
I read a story in the Punch newspaper of a US based Nigerian that travelled to Nigeria and fell on his way to his hotel room. He fell backwards on the staircase and hit his head, the impact to the head was grave, he became unconscious. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he was referred to LUTH. To cut the story short, his family was told there was no scan machine, no intracranial pressure monitoring machine, there was no drill to perform the surgery, the family had to pay for gloves and soap after paying millions to be in the private wing. The family paid ₦400,000 to rent the intracranial pressure monitoring machine, it was placed by his bedside and wasn’t used for days, it was used the day his wife arrived from the US. Mr Olaleye Adenibuyan died ten (10) days after he was taken to LUTH with nothing significant done to address his situation. The Nigerian health system failed him.
Now that story is of a family of means in Lagos, you can only imagine what happens to the low and middle income earners in Nigeria.
The Nigerian health system needs total reworking if the life of Nigerians means anything. Why won’t our medical professionals leave? patients die on their watch, they know what to do to save those lives but the system fails them by not providing the needed equipments, who can stand pronouncing people dead continously? one’s mental health will cave at some point.
The government is putting the cart before the horse.
We once had a sick president who spent over three (3) months sick leave in the UK.
We have had shameless leaders and we are still dealing with thesame shamelessness, instead of making the system work, and stop our leaders from going abroad for treatments , we are putting policies in place to stop the medical professionals from going to seek better lives for themselves, their families and to protect their mental health.
Our leaders spend money on unnecessary things like renovations, purchasing of vehicles, increase in salaries of Judicial officials by 300%, while our legislators keep coming up with different figures of their salaries. When the minister of health was recently asked about salaries of doctors he said to look beyond monetary compensation, to look at the bigger picture. Why can’t our leaders do thesame?
The health system works in those countries Nigerian health workers travel to, infact Nigerians who travel abroad for treatments are sometimes treated by Nigerians, that should tell our leaders something.
Covid 19 came and revealed the huge problems in our helathcare system, a lot of hospitals didn’t have ventilators. Mpox is fast becoming a problem, are we really prepared for this, down to the grass roots? Our hospitals are lacking a lot all over the country, this is a matter of urgency.
This policy should be for our leaders, it should be that leaders present and past and their family members should receive treatments in Nigeria, we have good doctors and nurses in Nigeria, afterall same Nigerian doctors treat them abroad, charity begins at home, let this one be from the top to the bottom.
