It has been over one week since I was caught up in the mega "go-slow" along the Ikorodu road on a Friday morning. I had navigated through GRA Ikeja and decided to join Ikorodu road at Maryland en route Surulere. It is not really surprising to witness snail paced traffic on Lagos roads usually caused by frequently broken down vehicles, usually avoidable accidents, illegal "stop and search" patrols, bad weather and the many crater ridden and gully eroded roads that hardly or never get maintained. The cause of this early morning gridlock was however something different. My first sighting of smoke was when I got to the Anthony area of the road. It was then I realised it was not a wise move to have ignored my initial plan of utilizing the Agege motor road instead. I knew something beyond the normal was happening and had my phone readied to become an i-reporter. It was only a matter of time for my quick shots of burning BRT buses, stranded commuters with armed and whip wielding soldiers to start trending on Twitter. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I got more retweets and interactions in two hours of mad traffic than I ever had since I opened a Twitter account. Eyewitness accounts and pictures on social media clearly identified the perpetrators of the chaotic scenes that Friday morning so it was rather nauseating to read the press release from the army that put all the blame on "area boys". Have the army become so cowardly to admit that a few erratic men and women in camouflage took laws into their hands to avenge the death of a colleague? Have they become so classless to apologize for the misdeeds of their kind? What indeed is all the masking and cover-up about? Why blame area boys who perhaps have more dignified jobs these days directing traffic or collecting levies from cycle and motor operators? Why have they chosen to deliberately feed the public wrong information and apparently shield criminals in their fold?
I was at the legal department of the hospital where I work last week solely to apply for a new identity card. I had to wait to see the official concerned and could not help but overhear the conversation of two male and a female official in that office. They talked extensively about the deliberate attempts by junior doctors who they helped to gain accommodation in the hospital to deceive them and cause any trouble capable of costing them their jobs. It was later in their discussion that they mentioned that there were other non doctors who also indulged in the pranks. I resisted the urge to engage in their talk until a nurse came in to visit one of the men. She soon realised that I was a doctor and suddenly started to accuse me of trying to reduce the amount paid to nurses and other health workers (not doctors) as hazard allowance. I was shocked and demanded to know the source of such information. I tried though unsuccessfully to convince her that the peddlers of such information were liars and were only trying to cause commotion that would benefit only the peddlers in the long run.
Why would leaders of an association made up of dissimilar unions indulge in spreading error to their members in order to convince them to detest doctors? They say doctors are fighting for their salaries and allowances to be reduced; they tell the public that doctors are selfish and are only interested in monetary gain. They continue to insist that members on a particular grade level in the civil service should become directors which is being resisted by doctors. They claim doctors own private practices and divert patients from government hospitals to maximize income. This mega union is in the first place not homogenous and consist of workers who have varied educational qualifications. How can a pharmacist or physiotherapist convince a hospital worker who has nothing but a senior secondary school certificate to join in a struggle for directorship? Who would eventually get to the grade necessary to qualify for such appointments? The secondary school certificate holder? They included this demands with others such as improved hazard allowance and uniform allowances to shut down a hospital in Lagos for over one month in January of 2014. What is the proportion of pharmacist in a teaching hospital for example? If their association stood alone and decided to embark on a strike action for improved hazard cover (I really do not know how much hazards they face in reality), they are assured that such action would have little or no effect as patients would be readily referred to procure their medications from external sources. This is actually part of the normal practice at most hospitals due to the fact that most in-hospital pharmacies do not quite have a complete spectrum of drugs available at any given moment. Their action would only be effective when they can utilize their foot soldiers to cripple the entire hospital. When new patients or those on appointments arrive, they would meet locked clinics and no records office to open a card for them. These patients leave the hospital assuming that the hospital is shut because doctors are on strike or perhaps because of a deliberate attempt to use the tag of a doctors' strike as cover for their "inconsiderate" action.
It must really be easy and lucrative to run private hospitals in Nigeria with the monthly demands of diesel powered generators and huge taxes. Some doctors have private practices; so do some pharmacists, laboratory scientists and physiotherapists even if they may just consult at the homes of bed ridden or arthritic patients. Some nurses too could have private practices from the comfort of their homes; they only need to acquire a few instruments and charge neighbours a small amount for routine procedures that may not require a visit to an emergency room. It also would not cost much for such to run retail chemist shops. This is like a case of having a beam in one's eye while trying to blow out the dust from another's. This practice is similar to what is practiced in our national political space. The likes of General Buhari are labeled as terrorists and Islamic fundamentalists by "christian" supporters of the present obviously corrupt incumbent. Some citizens follow this trend and have vowed never to vote for the man who they fear is relentless in his goal to transform Nigeria to an Islamic nation; a feat he did not even comprehend when he had supreme power as a military dictator. That is sadly the state of the nation we live in now.
It is not strange that some private hospitals may be better equipped than the state owned institutions. These practices still find it very difficult to meet global standards, the state of our public institutions will not even qualify to be graded with such highly standardized parameters. Why should a demand for upregulation of standards be deemed excessive, selfish and inconsiderate? The chambers of federal legislators and that of the federal executive council get huge budgetary allocation for maintenance and installation of new touch screen gadgets to facilitate voting in the case of the legislators. The low-key news about the commencement of a nationwide strike by judiciary workers was just on the news. In another story during the same broadcast, the Anambra state governor was captured presenting brand new salon cars to judges and senior judicial workers in the state to improve the delivery of "justice" in the state. He also promised to improve on their accommodation and general welfare inclusive of providing new generators. I just wonder if the governor would respond in similar manner if the health workers in the state's employment agitate for better working conditions.
The various governments in Nigeria have perfected the "divide and rule" tactic in dealing with perceived trouble makers. They yield ground to one side at the expense of the other even though both sides claim to have the best interests of the patients at heart. The present NMA strike if called off following any agreements and understanding with the centre will most likely be followed by a counter-strike by the JOHESU to press home their own demands. At the end of this vicious cycle, the health sector would have achieved next to nothing and the centre would have more funds at their disposal to effectively steal which technically is not corruption.
It is really sad when other health workers continue to obsess about hospital consultants who occupy top appointments such as medical director and other top positions. They desire such offices and the perceived benefits that come with them; stereotyping and generalizing all doctors in the process. They never tell the stories of consultants who have to perform surgeries under harsh conditions, doctors who have to tell a patient that his surgery was cancelled or aborted because of power outage or lack of oxygen. They never tell the story of the doctor tossed under the bus by his employers when sued for supposed negligence even though she had a tough choice to make in deciding which case needed more urgent attention. The story of the house officer who spent close to a week waiting in an emergency room for an "emergency" appendectomy due to lack of space or that doctor that spent his entire savings to manage a fractured limb acquired while on duty. It is difficult to forget the sight of watching a colleague go through the psychological trauma and discomfort of taking medications following an accidental needle prick whilst treating a potentially immunocompromised patient or the thought of those doctors who died on the road to or from distant examination centres. They perhaps do not pay attention when doctors rally themselves to raise money for their patients or when they offer their services for free during volunteer missions. They obviously do not regard the doctor who has just lost a spouse but is at work the next day because the patients have appointments; they did not hear that my father passed away on a Saturday and I was back at work on Monday morning after a nearly 12hours journey to see my family.
I do not blame them because they do not know. The doctors do not dwell in the past but simply get on with their jobs. The house officer will use the light from his phone to get a blood sample even if it is at the risk of him pricking himself, the pathologist will continue his autopsy even if agitated relatives of the deceased are outside and threaten to storm his room. A good number of medical directors are very much politicized and have made a harsh of their primary duties which has justifiably attracted resistance and defiance. It is still not an excuse to be unreasonable and distracted from the ultimate prize; a world class health sector. If the university of Lagos had an electron microscope in 1976, why should we in 2014 be begging for routine light microscopes deemed surplus to requirement in many of our institutions? If General Obasanjo on the 17th of November 1976 said that university education would become tuition free across the nation and that tuition and boarding would be free for polytechnic and technical-secondary education; why should we even tolerate an arguably non existent technical school structure and closure of higher institutions for months under a civilian administration? If we had rail tracks and locomotives of near British standard at independence, why should anyone tell us in 2014 to join a train that would take several long hours to kano; a journey that he would take with one of several jets in his fleet?
We have either participated in or encouraged criminality that has now become our creed in Nigeria. It is worse when we disguise it and label others as disgruntled and unpatriotic when in fact we are feeding fat and destroying our conscience in the process.
We need to repent. Absolutely!
Jide akeju.
12/07/2014
No comments:
Post a Comment