Health, they say is wealth. This, of course, is simple logic. You have to be healthy and strong to work or be productive, and when you work, you can then expect that money and wealth will follow.
An unhealthy and sickly person is not only a liability to himself/ herself, but also to relatives and sometimes friends.
As it is with an individual, so it is with a nation. A healthy nation stands a better chance of economic development because it will have an active and healthy work force. Of course, this is not automatic as there are other factors that contribute to a nation’s economic growth, yet health is imperative.
For the year ending, how well did the health sector fare? Did it perform well? Did it meet the expectations of the people? Our Correspondent, CHINWE MADUAGWU, sampled some opinions on the performance of the health sector in 2017.
Dr. John Ashindoitiang, who lectures at the College of Medicine, University of Calabar, said the health sector has not performed well for this year. “The health sector has not performed well. There’s decay in the facilities, there’s no motivation for the workers. The cost of medical bills in Nigeria is increasing and patients can’t afford even the lowest medical bills to be able to come for treatment.”
He spoke further, ” the process of carrying out diagnosis and treatment of patients has been very limited because of the lack of facilities and other problems in the hospitals.”
Dr. Ashindoitiang expressed the opinion that more funds should be injected into the sector to revive it. “I will suggest that government should allocate more money to the health sector and there should be improvement in health facilities because most of them are decayed.”
Mrs. Ngozi Onyejiaka, a senior health worker with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital ( LUTH)? shares the same sentiments as Dr Ashindiotiang. “The health sector in my opinion is performing below expectation. You find a lot of cases of under diagnosis or worse still, misdiagnosis due to inadequate training of personnel or unavailability of the right equipments and materials for proper investigations. Many Universities are not adhering to the guidelines for admission so you find too many students being admitted into the medical school. This inevitably over-stretches the facilities and manpower and ultimately waters down the quality of training.”
She also touched on the relationship between the general economy and the state of the health sector. Her words, “distractions on the part of the workers is another issue. High cost of living and poor state of primary and secondary education is leading many health workers to do extra work in order to cater for their families resulting in neglect of their primary assignment.
“Inadequate infrastructure is another reason. You find dilapidated furniture in many health institutions. Power and water supply are also not as regular. As we all know, this affects productivity especially delay in results for investigations. It will be good to mention, however, that power supply improved this past year. Lagos University Teaching Hospital also recently commenced an independent power supply provided by a private arrangement. This has really improved supply in the past weeks and reduced turn around time for investigations.”
Mrs. Onyejiaka spoke further, “workers are not sent for training as expected so they are not adequately retrained. You mostly find cases where a few people sponsor themselves, this is not encouraging.”
For Mr. Declan Okpaleke, a Media Consultant, the health sector like most sectors of the economy has not just struggled but has been in a terrible state of disrepair. According to him, budgeting has been a major part of the problem. “Budgeting has been the biggest challenge of this government among other things. It takes several months of valuable time to complete the budgeting process and by the time that is completed, the process of releasing funds becomes another challenge. The health sector has particularly suffered under this administration.
“Under the previous government, the sector was growing gradually. The Heads of State of the African Union, (AU) in a meeting held in Abuja a few years ago, came up with what they called Abuja Declaration where they agreed that because of the challenge that health poses to development of Africa, at least 15% of total budget of each country should be allocated to health sector. Nigeria has never reached the 15%. In fact, we have not crossed the 7% threshold.”
Mr. Okpaleke noted that instead of making efforts to attain the 15%, the health budget is being reduced further by the present administration. “We were increasing gradually under the past administration. However, under this government, in the last two years the health budget has dropped. All over the country, you find that the Primary Health Centers are suffering and this is where basic health issues ought to be treated. Majority of the primary health centers lack the basic things they need – qualified doctor, health workers, drugs – simple every day drugs, simple health care for pregnant women.
“Even the secondary health care centers at the Federal level i.e the Federal Medical Centers suffer terrible lack. You go to the centers, you find total dislocation and infrastructure decay. That’s why there is so much pressure on the tertiary health centers,” he said.
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Mr. Okpaleke lamented the reappearance of Polio in the country due to the present administration’s lack of focus on the health sector. His words, “Nigeria for two years maintained the no polio threshold but last year there was an outbreak and since then there have been so many cases particularly in the north east. Yes, boko haram insurgency has contributed but the question is what has the government done in 2017 to focus on it the way we were doing before.
“The focus in this country in the last three years has been on politics and consolidation of power rather than on treating and dealing with medical issues. Health issues affect everybody so after food and education, health should be the next priority in every country. But under this government, it is not. Instead of increasing the budget, we are reducing it. Instead of eliminating diseases, new ones are coming up.
“The President of this country made a declaration after his election that civil servants and public servants should not travel abroad for health checks and treatment. But the same President spent close to, if not more than six months, in the two years he has been in office in hospitals outside this country.
“If our hospitals are not good enough for them, it means we will continue to have a serious demarcation between who lives and who dies depending on importance and who can afford it. But healthcare should be a priority for every government so that everybody can have access to it,” Okpaleke said.
Concluding, Mr. Okpaleke said: “Basically, 2017 has been a bad year for the health sector and the primary thing is that there has been a lack of will by the government to focus on matters of health.”
In November, Punch Newspapers carried a report in which the Lagos State Chapter of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) decried the exodus of doctors from the country.
According to that report, the Chairman of NMA Lagos, Dr. Olumuyiwa Odusote, said more than 40, 000 of the 75, 000 registered Nigerian doctors were practicing abroad while 75% of those here were thinking of picking up jobs from abroad. He was also quoted as saying that over 100 doctors resigned from the University College Hospital, Ibadan, this year while about 800 doctors resigned from Lagos State hospitals in the last two years.
The Next Edition investigations, however, revealed that the situation is even more dire. According to our findings, if the trend of decline in the health sector is not arrested, Nigerians may one day go to government hospitals and not see a Doctor. This is because fewer doctors are showing interest in practicing medicine in Nigeria.
Five years ago, over 1,000 doctors wrote the required examinations that would qualify them to do their Residency training in Nigerian Teaching Hospitals. This year, only 236 doctors applied to write the examinations. Meanwhile, over 600 doctors applied to write a two-part assessment examination that overseas doctors or international medical students from outside European Economic Area and Switzerland have to pass before they can legally practice medicine in the UK.
As of October this year, over 1,000 have already registered for the assessment examination in United Kingdom (UK) scheduled for March 2018.
In addition to the number of doctors that resigned from UCH and Lagos State hospitals, The Next Edition also gathered that over 200 doctors and nurses have resigned from Ladoke Akintola Teaching Hospital this year.
Already, it is said to take a patient two hours to see a doctor on the average, three hours for new patients due to doctor – patient ratio.
Reacting to the exodus of doctors from the country, something which didn’t just start, Mr. Okpaleke said it portends something very ominous for the country. His words, “when these doctors leave in droves it means we will be lacking experts. These doctors are trained by us and they are supposed to train those coming after them. But when they leave, it means the younger ones have no one to train them, they have fewer people to learn from so it will not be a surprise that quackery becomes the order of the day. The young ones have nobody to mentor them, they make their mistakes with human beings in order to learn.”