HEALTH: A HUGE SHAME! WILL OUR CHILDREN AND UNBORN GENERATIONS FORGIVE US?

It’s so shameful to say the least that our country is really grinding to a HALT given the way things are going. I bet you, it will take only a miracle to get us out of this mess we are in at the moment.

And hey wait! Before you start casting blames on Jonathan, Yar’adua, Obasanjo and other past administration, I would like you to take a deep breath or better still a huge chill pill because we are all to blame for this situation we have found ourselves.

Now tell me, is it the government that will tell the management in a hospital to bring out already bought equipments to treat patients or is it the government that will go and take inventory CORRECTLY, or fix faulty machines and even buy diesel for generating sets?

I could go on and on and we would still not get to the end even if we spent the whole day.

The truth is, we have all failed firstly, as citizens of this country, secondly, as a people created by God and thirdly, as terrible trailblazers for generations yet unborn.

I just read in the vanguard that thousands of cancer patients are currently facing death nationwide, following a breakdown of all the radiotherapy machines at treatment centres in the country; a development which is no longer news to us as it has become a recurrent issue in our country for years. Sadly it has passed  manageable in the last few weeks as  thousands of patients and their relatives have raised fears and concerns having been turned back from some of the cancer centres as the machines are said to have developed problems due to lack of maintenance and overuse, as a result machines at the National Hospital Abuja, NHA, Lagos University Teaching Hospitals, LUTH, University College Hospital, UCH, Ibadan, including others in health institutions in Gombe, Enugu, Benin, Sokoto among others are allegedly having the same stories.

That is quite scary because it is a sure death penalty dangling over the heads of these patients if all the machines at the different centres are all truly faulty as reported. So what would the patients do? Especially those who do not have the wherewithal to go abroad.

Now the question any one would ask is “why do we always wait for everything to get bad at the same time before we start running about”? We have always run a bad maintenance culture in everything we use. It has become a part of us. When it comes to maintenance, 1-10 rating is zero as instead of running before-breadown, RBB, we run till-breakdown, RTB.

Reports had it that  the affected hospitals and their managements have adduced the lack of money to buy forex in order to bring in foreign experts to fix the machines hence all those who have oncology problems today in the country, may have to wait for a long time for their treatment to continue.

On the other hand and more heartbreaking according to an oncology expert is that, it was better for an oncology patient not to get radiation treatment than to get half dose or incomplete dosage. He was quoted to have said: “If somebody is getting a radiation treatment and breaks, the cells will now build immunity and bounce back.”

Another worrisome development in the report is that at the NHA, the new Lineal Accelerator Machine procured in 2014 is still intact in the crate and there are fears that they may have gone bad under the condition they are kept. So what are we talking about here?

They say patients need machines for treatment and they are talking about machines which ought to be used for treatment still in crates. Since 2014!

Do we need the government to help management think outside the box? They are busy turning back patients fro hospitals and screaming ‘foreign exchange’, light upsurge, machines are old, and more yet a machine is laying unused or getting bad as mentioned, in some crates. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it’s not only in NHA that “new machines are still in crates”. This is what I call heartless. May God really help us in this country.

I take some bit of solace in the words of Professor Francis Abayomi Durosimi Etti the Chairman, National Programme on Cancer Management, who confirmed the situation and also added authoritatively that government is doing a lot to get things done as regards the health facility.

Hmmm! We heard all of that and even more in the past. All we are saying is, enough of the ‘talk’, is time to ‘walk the talk’ and this walk will only make sense if we all do our parts in our different circles and up to the government.

You, who is a nurse, doctor, cleaner and worker in the –private and public- hospitals, do you play your part well to enable things move smoothly and keep facilities in working conditions?

Doctors, HOD, Dean, matron et al. what are you doing right or wrong?

Our leaders in Government, including the President, Vice President, Senate, Ministers, et al. What are you doing right or wrong?

And for the rest of us in our little corners. What are you doing right or wrong?

I guess the ball is in all OUR HANDS!

We all need to improve on our maintenance culture when it comes to public and private facilities, eschew foul plays, bitterness,thereby making things work in our country and even our children as well as the unborn generation will bless our souls.

THE NIGERIAN HEALTH SECTOR: A SHAME WORSE THAN DEATH

There is a proverb that says ‘shame is worse than death’ I guess that’s the level we are at several sectors in Nigeria at the moment. There’s no point going into details about the various sectors as my focus is on health today.

I and millions of other people living within and outside the shores of this country  have always said that the Nigerian health sector needs serious overhauling. Like a friend said the other day “we need to start from the very beginning”. The beginning in the sense that we need to go back to exactly how the colonial authorities taught us modern medicine.

Remember the days of dispensaries?

I don’t get it. Lives are being lost in thousands on a daily basis. I am not talking about the lives being lost through attacks from book haram, Fulani herdsmen et al. Rather; I am talking about the lives being lost as a result of the level of decay the health sector is encountering at the moment.

A couple of days back, a few doctors who were on their way to Abuja for a conference lost their lives not just because they had a fatal accident but mainly because they were not be properly attended to at the hospital they were rushed after the accident happened with flimsy excuses until some of the people who had survived the accident eventually died. The hospital lacked any of the facilities needed for their lives to be saved. Phew! Those were silly avoidable deaths.

Yesterday, I was going through facebook and I saw a picture of a young lady I knew while growing up back in the days, as a friend of mine wrote a beautiful message about her and eventually ended it with “REST IN PEACE”. When I saw that part of the message, my heart fell.

I became most outraged when I eventually heard how she died. So painfully shameful for our doctors and the health sector entirely. The said lady was ill and she was told it was ‘fibroid’ and was being treated for it until several months later another set of doctors diagnosed cancer of the colon.

Haaa! Please is there any doctor in the house? So all the while the poor lady was going about getting treatment for fibroid, she was unknowingly dying from cancer as the thing was gradually spreading. Wrong diagnosis again just as Gani Fawehinmi was wrongly diagnosed as well as the late beautiful gap-toothed NAFDAC boss, Mrs Dora Akunyili. What a pain!

It is only in this country a doctor will tell you one strange thing just for him to recommend surgery and collect money only for you to discover later that the surgery was not actually needed as nothing was wrong with you. How greedy and wicked can man be?

When abroad and I miss a GP appointment, it is the hospital that will be pursuing me with calls that I was due for a hospital appointment and would like to know why I didn’t make it. Back home in naija! For where? Who will call you not to talk about why you didn’t make it. It’s just how rotten the system is.

Oh hold on a minute. I recall that they do actually call, especially the private hospitals and such calls on nearly every occasion is to remind you of outstanding bills/card renewal. At the end of the day, it is not about your health but your pocket. What a big shame!

How many people can afford going abroad for medicals? Many people can barely eat not to talk about buying drugs worth one thousand naira. So what are we talking about here?

Is there ever going to be a solution or way out of this nightmare called ‘THE NIGERIAN HEALTH SECTOR’?

We sure do really HELP out of this shame that is worse than death!