Opinion: Dear Jonathan, sack Ebola, not the doctors
Last week’s sack of 16,000 Resident Doctors
by the Federal Government is careless, unscrupulous and clearly an
indefensible action. It could turn out to be a social catastrophe that
will worsen a medical system in severe crisis.
As said by the Nigeria Medical Association,
NMA, this action can only worsen the abysmal doctor-patient ratio,
which stands at 1:6,300 today, which is among the continent’s worst
examples of the dearth of medical manpower. It similarly highlights the
ill-health of the health sector and lays bare the increasing alienation
of government of the country from its subjects.
Our
doctors are not all saints but they certainly are no prostitutes as
some in government will like to us to believe. In which case it is
better we seek to end the epidemic diseases rather than ending doctors’
careers.
In this country, governments have for a
long time withdrawn their responsibility for healthcare and education to
the common people and have left the field open for persons seeking
profits. That accounts for why Doctors have continued their strike into
the second month and a façade of normalcy appears to pervade the
environment.
People here stay alive because God cares. No one looks after the patients.
The National Association of Resident
Doctors, NARD went on strike to mainly press the government to implement
agreements earlier reached. Other issues are secondary to this. It is
only in this country that government will consciously enter into
agreement with labour unions without the intention to implement them.
They just walk away from doing its part without any qualms. This had
been the bone of contention between the Academic Staff Union of
Universities, ASUU. A government so bereft of credibility could only
convince the university teachers to go back to classrooms after the
Central Bank published a statement indicating that money expected as
part of the agreement was on account.
The Nigerian health structure has grown
largely in spite of the government. Successive administrations have
failed to catch up with the growing needs of rapid population growth,
modernization, research and the changes in medical science. Governments
get away with doing little or nothing because we have a two-tiered
system that permits for-profit hospitals existing side-by-side with
public facilities.
Given this situation, the private hospitals
have offered succor to families who can afford to pay their often
exorbitant charges. The well-off get treated with top-notch medical
practices and medicines and the poor Nigerians gets far less or no care
at all. Some government hospitals are no more than a place to die under a
roof.
When you talk to them, there are many of
our countrymen who are afraid to go before doctors and hospitals and
they double-up abroad at the slightest sign of sickness. I am told that
between a half and two-thirds aboard every Egypt Air Flight out of Kano,
five times a week is made up of medical tourists trooping to Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and India for treatment.
But the private sector cannot provide
affordable healthcare neither can it fulfill the needs of the population
from their government. That is why they have the NHIS in the UK and
Medicare in the United States.
While governments continue to fail in both
the provision of adequate healthcare and a competent regulatory regime
over the blossoming for-profit healthcare system, overall deterioration
of the system has come to a point where many of the so-called private
healthcare facilities have become no more than medical and diagnostic
shops. Without a government policy to audit their services, private
hospitals are known to prescribe unnecessary investigations, procedures
and medicines. Making profits is not a bad thing by itself. No business
can exist if it is not profit-making. The problem as we have here is
that this is not governed by ethics and morality.
In the United States, six hospitals have so
far this year been fined millions of Dollars for conspiring with
diagnostic centres and recommending needless procedures. These include
Kentucky Hospital, fined 41Million Dollars for prescribing an
unnecessary procedure.
Since our governments are unprepared to
rise to the challenges of providing modern and competent healthcare
services to the ordinary citizens, the least they owe to us is to wake
up to their duty of surveillance, enforcement and regulation so as to
save us costs and life as well. They must throw a spotlight over this
dark side of the country’s healthcare segment.
To do this, a good starting point is to
call back the sacked doctors, sit down with them and listen to their
grievances. There is nothing to gain from the sack of thousands of
doctors. This country is still to recover from the exodus of doctors
following the proscription of the NMA and NARD by the military regime in
1985.
Treated with decency and respect, our
doctors are reasonable and would act with reason and patriotism
especially in view of Ebola and other epidemics such as cholera that are
making new in-roads.
Our doctors are not all saints but they
certainly are no prostitutes as some in government will like to us to
believe. In which case it is better we seek to end the epidemic diseases
rather than ending doctors’ careers.
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Written by Garba Shehu. This article was published with permission from Premium Times
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Kevin Djakpor's Blog.