A nation of idiots (II)

When my wife left Malaysia for Nigeria in 2009, the hospital –where she was going for ante-natal care – called to ask why she didn’t meet an appointment. I apologetically told them that my wife had travelled to our country. That phone conversation shocked me and made my family feel special at the same time.  […]

When my wife left Malaysia for Nigeria in 2009, the hospital –where she was going for ante-natal care – called to ask why she didn’t meet an appointment. I apologetically told them that my wife had travelled to our country. That phone conversation shocked me and made my family feel special at the same time.  However, there was nothing special about us – that is just the system. They’re supposed to call their patients when they don’t see them – from a government hospital!  In Nigeria you may be called, but you have to be the wife of a senator or his ilk – people from whom the hospital workers believe they can get personal favours.

When one of my friends in Malaysia got sick, spent several days in the hospital and was about to leave, he wanted to pay (more than a hundred thousand naira), but he was told that his student medical insurance covered the expense.  However, I remember reading a story in Daily Trust where a woman gave birth in a private hospital in Abuja.  The baby died (probably due to their negligence) but the body was not released to the parents because the hospital claimed her insurance didn’t cover the childbirth.

In Malaysia, if a foreigner visits a hospital (whether public or private), he’ll pay RM15 (N750) and depending on your problem, would be given a truck-full of medicine.  A local pays RM1 (N50) for the same treatment– they’re even working to make it completely free for their people.

Further, if you go to the hospital on campus (public universities usually have large hospitals – not teaching hospitals), you pay nothing.

While there, there’s an orderly ticketing system to ensure that nobody jumps the queue. Also a notice is boldly displayed to inform you that if you’ve waited for more than 23 minutes (or there about) without being attended to or called on the ticketing system, you should inform them immediately.  This system provides certainty and peace of mind. It also ensures that all non-emergency cases will receive human intervention in less than 23 minutes.  In Nigeria, you wait for hours.

When I was complaining that the death of my sister was the fault of the hospital, many sympathizers told me their own tales of cruel and almost useless healthcare system in Nigeria.   For example, at a private hospital in Minna, a mother who was about to give birth to twins was left alone with nurses for several hours without the doctor showing up. In the process, a twin died and the nurses broke the leg of the second twin – it was detached from the hip-joint.

But my wife told me that hospital is adjudged to be the best in Minna; I told her that hospitals (which wilfully kill babies) like that, shouldn’t be in operation.  And whenever the authorities allow them to operate, they should be taken out of service by malpractice law suits.  But in Nigeria, we don’t sue people or institutions.  I’ve never, for example, seen a lawyer who introduced himself as a medical malpractice lawyer.

If we continue like this, my thesis that we (both people and leaders) are idiots, is not only validated now but also in the future.  For example, if I, a member of the masses, don’t speak out or sue the hospital that killed my sister for malpractice, it’ll happen again, to a stranger, to another person I know or to even myself.

The leaders are also idiots because, it’s this health moribund healthcare system that they’ve adamantly refused to straightened that will kill them.  Unfortunately for them, it’s the nature of medical emergency not to wait for anybody to be flown abroad thousands of miles away.

Therefore, it follows that it’s in the interest of our leaders also to evolve our 19 century healthcare to a system that can save lives, so that we can survive together.  If they don’t do so, when their planes encounter accidents and their speeding cars jump of the roads which they refuse to tar, there wouldn’t any efficient medical care to solve their emergency.

As for my sister, I can only pray for her; and I implore those who pray to pray for her.  While praying for my sister, do not forget our leaders also.  My prayer for them is this:

I hold anybody and everybody who stole money budgeted for health, and anybody and everybody who had the responsibility of sanitizing the health sector but didn’t, responsible for my sister’s death.

May Allah destroy them all – ALL of them.