Nigerian hospitals still practising 1970s medical care – Dr Ajayi
What does your organisation do?We deliver free healthcare to different states within Nigeria and different countries. We went to Haiti during the earthquake and brought in around $3 million worth of medical equipment, medication, and established a one-year relationship with the Haitian government. We were there every month to provide care. When was it started?It […]
What does your organisation do?
We deliver free healthcare to different states within Nigeria and different countries. We went to Haiti during the earthquake and brought in around $3 million worth of medical equipment, medication, and established a one-year relationship with the Haitian government. We were there every month to provide care.
When was it started?
It was established in 2006, and the reason was when I was 18, I came back home to Nigeria, and I went to hospital and was amazed at the treatment provided there. I said this cannot be the service my people are getting on a daily basis.’ And this was considered to be the best hospital in Lagos. That hospital was not comparable to the worst hospital back in the United States. At that moment, I knew I had to do something.
Tell us a bit more about the hospital and how it functions?
One of the things we do is hospital construction, management, so the name Hospitals for Humanity is a little misleading, but the ‘hospital’ comes in because when we go to a community to deliver health care, we bring into the community the whole hospitals. We bring a team of nurses, surgeons, everyone, so it is like a mini hospital.
Why are you in Nigeria?
We just finished an ophthalmology mission in Rivers State, in which we did over 200 eye surgeries on children and adults. We had teams working for one week on glaucoma and the second week on glaucoma extraction.
Is this the first time your organisation is coming to Nigeria?
We have been coming to Nigeria since 2006, working a lot in Isanlu, Kogi state with former health minister Eyitayo Lambo. We actually helped that community establish a health insurance scheme and a brand-new facility. The most amazing thing is that the people in that community have taken back their healthcare. When we first went, there wasn’t that much there. Five years later, it has been turned around.
How do you assemble the team you take for missions?
When we do a mission, there is an application process we go through. If it’s a doctor, he will fill up the application, go through interview, then another medical interview to see if they have what it takes to work in war areas.
We advertise in the media for a lot of people who think they may want to volunteer.
How many countries have you worked in and how many states in Nigeria?
In Nigeria we have worked in Rivers, Kogi, Anambra, Lagos and Osun. We also did something at Nyanya General Hospital when we first started in the Abuja area. We have been to Haiti, Vietnam and the Philippines. We have also been to Senegal, Ivory Coast and Liberia.
Do you do any follow up to monitor progress after your mission in the areas you worked?
Before choosing where we go, we do a very extensive needs assessment. Sustainability is important to Hospital for Humanity. If it is not sustainable, then there is no point getting involved. We partnered with the Rivers ministry of health. We are taking a new procedure, the GAST.
Our glaucoma surgeons came in and did this procedure that’s never been done. So we are partnering with the ophthalmology department in Rivers, taking two ophthalmologists and training them in the US.
In the next two years, those surgeons will be able to perform these surgeries. We always want a relationship with patients that will need to be followed up with the current doctors there. There is always an open dialogue. We always come back. The minimum we decide to stay in the communities we go to is five years. We don’t just go to communities, say this is what we do and then we leave.
How do you fund the procedures?
We have philanthropists that enjoy what we are doing. We also apply for US grants. We are a 501C3-they are granted certain opportunities in the US to apply for grants. We also fundraise within our organisation. Money is always a hindrance but you have to have it to do what we do. We have done much with the small amount we have. We make the best of it.
Tell us your experiences working in Nigeria?
There is a gap between the technology and the physician working here. If I wanted to be brutally honest, I would say Nigeria as a whole is still practising 1970s to 1980s medicine that was practised in the US then. That needs to change now and quickly. Which can be changed with technologies that exist now. There is a technology boom in computers and healthcare. Somewhere in between that technology boom, Nigeria got lost. A lot of times, people believe buying CAT scans and these big equipment is the way to go but if you don’t have a system in place to sustain that equipment, it falls by the wayside and becomes null and void. There is a medical technology gap and if we can bridge that gap, we would be on the road to better health care.
What do you think could improve what we have here?
The basic thing here is technology. I must say that the physicians here in Nigeria are better. The Nigerian medical team-nurses, doctors-are brilliant, and from a clinical standpoint, Nigerians are the best. But medicine isn’t just based on clinical. You have to have some of the technology along with the clinical side to it. In some of the physicians we bring from the US, their clinical skills are still low, because the technology is so high. If we can get the technology, Africa could be the next goldmine for healthcare, because the physicians in Africa are so brilliant.
When I talk of technology, it is the full arena. The physician and nurse have to be trained on the equipment. And then there is another side, the biomedical side. A hospital is only as good as their biomedical department.