Rather than providing healthcare, they go for workshops, conferences

But on returning to his post-retirement home, my father soon discovered that unlike his former place of abode in the Northern part of Nigeria, his part of Arondizuogu in Onu-Imo local government area cannot boast of having a functional rural healthcare center and to cap it all, the village is lacking in virtually all the […]

But on returning to his post-retirement home, my father soon discovered that unlike his former place of abode in the Northern part of Nigeria, his part of Arondizuogu in Onu-Imo local government area cannot boast of having a functional rural healthcare center and to cap it all, the village is lacking in virtually all the basic necessities of life like electricity, good road network, functional market facilities and that the nearest available functional health care facilities are just some few privately run clinics on Okigwe town which is like one hour’s drive on the dangerous and pot-hole ridden untarred rural feeder road.

I got home to discover that my father needed urgent medical attention for an undisclosed health condition but which we could not provide except if we were prepared to part with huge sums of money as payment to the few medical workers we found after about one hour’s drive to Okigwe. My father is back to his good health but the same cannot be said of so many other rural dwellers in most parts of the country who are unable to afford the costly fees charged by the few functional private hospitals in the country.

Few weeks back, a neighbour in Abuja lost his daughter because most government hospitals in Abuja were partially or fully closed down by the strike action embarked upon by medical staff and the only General Hospital where skeletal services were offered then could not save the 27-year-old-girl who only recently graduated with distinctions in the core sciences from the Federal University of Technology Minna, in Niger State.

This promising girl who excelled in mathematics was involved in a ghastly auto crash on her way back to Abuja from school and so, when she was taken to the Maitama and Wuse General Hospitals, the few medical workers who were offering skeletal services could not save her precious life.

Some weeks ago, several hundreds of Nigerians died from cholera, a water borne disease that has been eradicated in most civilized climes because those nations do not toy with the sanitary conditions of their environments and their respective ministries of health are up and doing. In fact, they cannot afford the political consequences of a badly managed health sector especially since power belongs truly to the people who will not hesitate to vote those poor performers out of office. Private hospitals in places like America and Europe offer the best because if they commit any slight medical error , the cost of damages to be awarded litigants by the efficient criminal justice system in those nations could lead to eventual imprisonment of the key staff.

But in Nigeria, anything goes and no medical worker is vicariously liable for causing death to patients through carelessness and no private hospitals have been closed down because of payment of damages awarded by the courts.

Regrettably, the current minister of health has become the official enumerator of the number of hapless Nigerians who have died from avoidable health conditions. Rather than leading the drive to bring health care facilities closer to the Nigerian people, officials of the ministry at every level are busy attending workshops and conferences.

On October 6 2010, The Guardian reported that in the last six months, over 425 children died from cholera and lead poisoning in Zamfara and Yobe States. The report which was credited to the international non-governmental organization, Medecines Sans Frontieres (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, stated that lead poisoning had killed more than 400 children under five in the past six months in Zamfara State even as 25 persons, mainly children below the age of five died on October 5 2010 at Gashua General Hospital in Yobe State after receiving over 105 cases of diarrhea.

Nigeria ranks as the highest in infant and maternal mortality globally. This has been shown statistics provided by the relevant United Nations development and health agencies like UNICEF and UNDP.

The simple reason why vulnerable and impoverished persons continue to die in Nigeria from largely treatable diseases is total lack of good governance in the healthcare sector. The primary healthcare sub-sector is the most affected and this has unfortunately made many rural dwellers who visit the poorly maintained and dysfunctional healthcare centers to die from even simple diseases like malaria and cholera.

A working paper prepared in January 2006 by Maureen Lewis of the Center for Global Development entitled “Governance and Corruption in Public Healthcare Systems” said absence of good governance in any country adversely affects the healthcare sector.

She wrote thus: “Health care provision depends on efficiently combining financial resources, human resources and supplies, and delivering services in a timely fashion distributed spatially throughout a country. This requires a system that mobilises and distributes resources, processes information and acts upon it and motivates providers’ appropriate behaviour by individuals, health care workers and administrators. Good governance is a critical factor in making such a system function”.

Lack of good governance is also a symptom of total disrespect by the public office holders to the provisions of the constitution. Professor de Smith submitted that “…constitution is practiced in a country where the government is genuinely accountable to an entity or organ distinct from itself where elections are freely held on a wide franchise at frequent intervals, where political groups are free to organize in opposition to the government in office and where there are effective legal guarantee of the fundamental civil liberties enforced by an independent judiciary….”

Duncan Clarke in his book, “Crude Continent; the Struggle for Africa’s Oil Prize”, restated a well known fact when he stated that “during Obasanjo’s eight-year tenure as president [1999-2007], Nigeria earned $223 billion in oil revenues. However, basic living conditions worsened significantly for most Nigerians. Around 70 percent remained in survival mode, living on less than a dollar per day [80 percent of oil revenue benefiting around one percent of the populace].”

This postulation by this legal expert and the revelation by the international writer bring us to the question, why no significant number of former or serving public office holders have been successfully convicted in the law court for perpetrating the monumental corrupt practices that have rendered our healthcare facilities prostrate and hopelessly inefficient?

Section 14(2) (b) of the constitution states that, “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. But I ask, when will Nigerians stop dying from treatable diseases because of poor healthcare facilities?

Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria.