The title of this piece is at once an overstatement as it is an understatement, for two reasons. First, I assume that there is a health sector that concerns itself with healthcare delivery in Nigeria. But given my knowledge of modern healthcare delivery schemes in health sectors in other countries, the word "healthcare" becomes a misnomer and an overstatement in the context of discussing Nigeria's health sector.
Second, the title rates what the officials of both the federal and state health ministries in Nigeria term "healthcare" as "appalling". If you indeed classify what we have as healthcare, then it is an understatement to score it "appalling". It is therefore for want of a worse grade that I have awarded this. Now, I proceed on this score: that I assume ours is a health sector designed to facilitate the delivery of healthcare services and, two that it is in a very bad state.
Curiously, who does one call on if a country's health sector is in a "bad state"? Anything in bad state urgently need the attention of a health practitioner but in this case, the system itself is afflicted.
I consider it a malady requiring an immediate declaration of a state of emergency that:
one Saminu Turaki, former governor of Jigawa who unofficially and recklessly stole from the treasury and now a senator, was involved in an auto crash, sustained a bone fracture and has now being flown to Singapore for treatment with taxpayers' money. It is bad enough that the legislator, who while on a frolic of his own since he was coming from a wedding (which is not one of the enumerated functions of a federal law maker in the Nigeria Constitution), has to be flown abroad for medical care with all the so-called medical centers of excellence in Nigeria. More nauseating is the knowledge that we are paying for a mere bone fracture treatment that could have been confined to one of Igbobi, Kano or Enugu Orthopaedic hospitals! Even alternative medical practitioners in my village could heal that bone for just the price of an organic fowl!
In other climes, where healthcare- whether private or public- is a reality, bone fracture patients are not flown abroad. I understand this could be due to political expediency or some show of camaraderie being that the accident victim is a member of the ruling party, but it is also a damning report on the health sector in Nigeria. A very boastful government of the day would have gleefully cease the opportunity to market itself by calling on the best hospital in Nigeria to treat the senator if indeed any of our hospitals could be rated as such!
We, thus, have a long way to travel on the road to the "pretentious" institution of an affordable and accessable healthcare system for Nigerians. One can imagine the total resignation to fate of the authorities of the National Hospital, Abuja and the many teaching hospitals in Nigeria who have to contend with politicians and our leaders' lack of faith in their ability to provide treatment for simple medical problems like bone fracture. I'd be worried if they are not complaining by right.
Since the focus of this blog is health related issues, there are plans by me to develop a definitive guide to healthcare delivery in Nigeria. My only concern is that Prof. Osotimehin and his acolytes in the ministry of health may never read it.
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