State of Health Care in Nigeria

I am often wondering about when Nigeria will arrive at a point where basic necessities of life will work. Pondering and wondering do nothing for the good of humanity, as my church Pastor has said on a few occasions, "Good intentions count for nothing", in essence, until action is taken, all the good intentions in the world would not do anyone any good.

Where am I going with this you wonder, well its to do with the state of health care in Nigeria.  I have a lot of issues with a lot of things being done in Nigeria and I know that if I do not focus on one at a time, I may lose my sanity... its not funny... actually it may be funny in a sad way, but very true.

In the late 1980s, I nearly lost my life to Typhoid Fever, I could have died because of the poor health care at that point.  I went to the public hospital, time was wasted in treating what was thought to be a simple malaria, but no diagnosis or test to confirm.  When it got worse, my girlfriend at that point in time, Oh God bless her, she encouraged me to go private, with virtually no fund.  The truth of the situation was that I was on the verge of completing my exams at the Ogun State Polytechnic and I was so broke, there was no money to buy Panadol talk less of paying a private hospital.

I was saved by a young doctor, who was a friend to my then girlfriend.  He checked me out, managed to get me into the private hospital, secure blood test and diagnosed Typhoid.  The money to buy the rest of the treatment was raised quickly and I am today grateful to a handful of friends that rallied round to save my life from something that should not be so life threatening.

Just in 2006, I learnt about the accident where over 100 lives were lost on the Ife-Ibadan motorway.  The church I attended that sunday, the congregation was asked to pray that God will battle against the blood-sucking demons that make the accidents happen.  The story of how that accident happened will be in another blog, but the point I am keen on making here was the fact that lives were lost, not just because of the unfortunate accident, but because there was no infrastructure in place to respond quickly.

There were no ambulances, no fire service to rescue lives and no equipment in the general hospitals to initially stabilize the victims or progress treatment to a fairly standard level.  If you have seen how accident victims are carried and shoved/cramped into back of cars to rush them to hospital in Nigeria, you will understand why higher percentage die or are disabled for life.  I have a number of other stories of this nature to tell, including the loss of the life of my mother-in-law some years back through an accident that should not have claimed her life.

The most recent is a very good friend, an editor of one of the popular Nigerian newspapers, whose mum had an accident a few days ago up north.  She was practically in tears as she saw her mother in terrible pain, but the poorly trained and poorly equipped hospital staff including doctors could not do much to help.  The mum has been moved to a private hospital and as at this morning, she confirmed some amount of stability but stated clearly the infrastructure and training even in private hospital in Kaduna is still appalling, in fact I reckon it must be disgraceful.

I was at the Bloggers' Conference this last weekend and was privileged to meet Dr. Ike Anya, a UK based medical practitioner who has been campaigning and supporting initiatives to engage colleagues in Diaspora to help with the capacity issue in Nigeria.  Dr. Anya acknowledged efforts of other various Nigerian interest groups trying to improve situation back home, but unfortunately, the only way all of those initiatives and effort would amount to anything substantial is if the Government would coordinate the effort and put a strategy in place to maximize outcome of all private and charitable initiatives from diaspora.

In my usual style of looking for solutions rather than just moaning / wingeing about problems, I am writing this piece to profile the issue, engage friends who may wish to join hands with existing groups either in Diaspora or back home in Nigeria and most importantly, source for coordinated approach to secure Nigeria's Minister of Health buy-in.  This final point will be to get the Ministry to work out best way possible to tap into capacity from Diaspora as some of the best Doctors, Medical Consultants and Registrars in the medical field in UK and US are actually Nigerians.

As you read this blog, I hope you will feel concerned enough to think of one way or the other to contribute something to help improve health care in Nigeria and save a life or two...  If you are unsure of what to do or where to start, feel free to contact me to point you in the direction of organisations you can add value to.