Hottestgistnaija.com
18th November, 2022.
Saw a client I represented a while ago and I thought deeply about the contradictions in this country and how difficult it is to understand why Nigeria is not working.
The client was in DSS detention at the time. He had sustained bullet injury in the process of his arrest and bullets got stuck in his hand. The hand was swollen and it seemingly appeared that there was no doubt the hand would have to be cut off. In fact, the first doctor who checked him said they had to amputate the hand. The hand was indeed badly swollen and looked pathetic. One day the DSS took him out of his cell and whisked him into a medical theatre where a surgical procedure was carried out on the hand same day. The remnant embedded bullet warheads were taken out and he was back in his cell the better for it.
Glad to see him using that hand now that he is out of DSS custody as a free person but I wonder sadly how differently his situation would have been if the circumstance of the injury was different and he had to personally rely on our perennially slothful and unpredictable public hospitals. He would have been delayed to get a hospital card, endure a slow-moving waitlist to see a consultant surgeon who, for many inexplicable reasons not least amongst which is impatience with detailed diagnosis and treatment options with a crowd waiting to be daily attended to, would most likely recommend that the hands be chopped off.
The entire Nigeria Public health sector is zero and successive governments have failed to revive this important sector and rather keep wasting resources on medical tourism. The sooner we realize that our hospitals, in the large part, offer no real hope in complex or even basic medical challenges the better for us.
I was acutely reminded of this dire reality when I recently took ill and was rushed to the hospital. I would stepped out of court when I noticed I was shivering seriously under the hot sun. My mouth felt dry and patched and my head pounded with a sudden migraine. I managed to reverse and drive out of the court complex on my way home to rest till the fever broke but I began to lose consciousness on the wheel and could feel myself about to faint and pass out.
In my grogginess, I sighted a Road Safety van and I crossed the road and backed up in front of them. They, the Federal Road Safety officers, rushed out to arrest me and were asking me what I was driving, where were my papers and lots of questions all at a time, but I could not respond well. The officer who already entered the seat beside me felt my body heat and heard me struggling in a low voice saying’ “hospital! hospital!” He quickly notified the rest it was a medical emergency.
Kudos to them, their approached changed. They immediately took me to the back seat and rushed me heading for a hospital. I was already weak and hardly could talk, but when I listened to their conversation about taking me to a National Hospital, I opened my eye and said no please, Nizamiye, Nizamiye, Idu. I got to the hospital as an emergency patient and everybody was scampering to help and within two minutes I was placed in bed under intensive care. Why I rejected the public hospital was simply because I have been to public hospitals before and seen how emergency patients are treated nonchalantly and without regards. The medical practitioners there seem poorly motivated and lack the passion for their work. In fact, as far as public hospitals go, God has been the one Taking Care of Nigerians.
Federal and state governments must therefore as a matter of urgency declare a state of emergency in our health sector because a healthy nation is a wealthy one. We must take up the challenge of turning the glorified analogue clinics we call medi-care systems into respectable hospice and hospitals so as to keep up with best global standards. Equally important is the need to incentivize and keep our public health workers adequately motivated for the overwhelming work they do because God is taking care us.
Pelumi Olajengbesi Esq. is a Legal Practitioner and the Managing Partner, Law Corridor.
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