Resident doctors in Nigeria have recently downed tools in a dispute with the government over renumeration and welfare. As usual, when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Patients have been left to their fate in what is yet another episode in the unbearably ugly theatre of trauma Nigeria`s health care is turning out to be.
It is no secret that for many years, Nigeria`s health system has been walking on borrowed legs. Those who live in rural communities where access to civilization and the dramatic improvements it brings to the quality of life are cut off by the shamefully glaring lack of good roads and power, often have no access to health care, and children routinely die from the most preventable of diseases while public officials who should bear responsibility for the fatal failures become medical tourists to other countries at the slightest feeling of discomfort.
Nigerian doctors have often been forced to bear the brunt of government`s abysmal failure to guarantee the health of Nigerians. Trained and sworn to preserve life, the long-suffering doctors have often watched on helplessly and haplessly as patients have lost the easiest health battles because the system is not built to withstand even minor shocks.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic brought into sharp focus the invaluable service health personnel render, and the many life-threatening dangers they face on a daily basis. In the line of duty, many of them have lost their lives. This is in addition to the toll their daily encounter with the infirm and dying takes on their mental health and psychological wellbeing.
Yet, the government does puzzlingly little. Members of the executive and legislature at federal and state levels whose over-bloated pay packages have long been a source of internal, eternal and international embarrassment and consternation often avoid Nigerian hospitals which are waiting morgues. As far as they are concerned Nigerian doctors can feed their families with whatever. It is an epic scandal that a good number of them are themselves medical practitioners who should know the importance of the work doctors do and the hazards they face on a daily basis.
It is unavoidable that when the baby sitter is roundly and wrongly ignored, it is the baby that suffers ultimately. Nigerians are the ones who have been left to bear the brunt of crumbling health infrastructure and disgruntled medical doctors. It is Nigerians that are left to die from entirely preventable and treatable diseases. It is Nigerians who lose their children to childhood killer diseases because those who should ensure that these diseases do not become deadly are more preoccupied with themselves. It is still Nigerians who have to live with the anxiety that when their bodies are down by life`s daily grind, they will find no succor in hospitals.
It explains the panic that spread like wildfire at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when Nigerians thought they would witness the number of casualties that the deadly virus claimed in climes with more sophisticated healthcare systems.
The nauseating nonchalance with which doctors are treated in Nigeria surely promises that the brain drain that is imposing on Nigerians an acute shortage of medical doctors will be around for a long time as Nigerian doctors will continue to be lured to other countries by the sirens of better conditions. It makes the jaw drop that in some states, medical doctors have not been paid for eighteen months.
While the diabolical dereliction on the part of the federal and state governments continue, Nigerians should never fail to note those public officers who would rather that scalpels and stethoscopes are taken away from doctors here while they flee to other countries for every fever and headache. Nigerians must ensure that they occupy no public office.
• Kene Obiezu, Abuja
