YEARS back, hospitals like UCH were ranked high in the health care sector. In fact, people come in from different parts of the world to access care. Now, what we have is patients being flown abroad for care. Hospitals had now turned to mere consulting rooms. What really went wrong?
Well, you cannot have a better healthcare than what your country is. What I am trying to say is that we have had the best facilities in the past. But with the political changes, everything has run down.
There is no doubt about that but we have gained in many areas. We have trained many specialists in Nigeria and they are working in this country and serving the people. But most of the things that we have done in the past, we have allowed to slip. We have slipped backwards and now unable to maintain the facilities that we have in the past.
But when people talk about medical tourism, let us be clear. Medical tourism is not because of diagnosis. Take cardiology specialty, my field, for example, we have the different machines that may be required here in Nigeria. We have all the facilities, but patients cannot or do not want to pay for it. That is the crux of the matter.
In the private sector, all these facilities and specialists are in place. However, everybody tend to fixate on the public sector. But the problem is that people cannot afford it or they do not want to pay for it. That is the matter.
Since the private sector is now taking over gradually, these equipments are available in private sector but people may not be able to afford treatment in the private sector.
Thirdly, we have an inbuilt attitude in our mind that anything that comes from a black person or black doctor is inferior to what comes from a white doctor.
As such most people will rather prefer white doctor to treat them than a black doctor even if the black doctor is even more knowledgeable than the white. So, it is a matter of attitude.
But we have been there before. Nigeria has attained several things before; we had the one of the best teaching hospital in the commonwealth and so on.
There is no doubt that we have allowed things to slip; lack of water, lack of electricity and so on have impacted negatively on our practices. And I think a major part of the problem is because we have allowed these things to go into abeyance.
Before, when I was in the university, we had constant power and water. Then in the University of Ibadan, as a student, we never even thought of power outage.
But when we started centralising things by building the Kanji dam, we then cancelled all local power stations and then we were now having power shortage.
What we ought to have done was to improve on the local facilities. Ibadan power supply was from Eleyele. Power was generated in Ijora power station and it was steady. Ijora power station is still there. Eleyele dam is still there but they have all gone into oblivion.
What we needed to do was to improve on it as the city is growing, but we just cancelled everything, and start to depend on Kanji dam. We are now transmitting power for the country. So there are things that we have not done.
This is where it is linked with our political development because the military believes in centralising things- command and control. But we have allowed everything to slip.
So those are some of our problems; there are fundamental things. They are all linked to agitation for decentralisation which is regionalism. You see when you overcentralised things, you are building inefficiency.
So those things that we had achieved before, like the universities that we had built to world class such as Universities of Ife, Lagos, Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello, we have allowed to slip. Now, we are slipping and slipping further, all because we have centralised things and put them under a “command and control”.
Read more at: http://www.tribuneonlineng.com/health-education-nigeria-slipped-backwards-falase-ex-ui-vc/
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