Medicine In Nigeria Is 20 Years Behind

‘Better to remain silent and be thought a fool,

Than to speak out, removing all doubt’ Abraham Lincoln

Just manage

I was conducting a clinic recently when my patient related his ordeal in the hands of a surgeon. Apparently, my patient had undergone two botched operations for a broken bone in his arm. The highest-ranking medico performed the operations: the consultant. It seemed that the outcome of the operations was no better than what a local traditional bonesetter or nature could do.

To be fair, without the right atmosphere and proper management, most hospitals are an embodiment of incompetence. The fact is that with poor funding, poor internal resource allocation and an abject state in most hospitals, medicine in Nigeria today is about 20 years behind what obtains in progressive communities.

For example, most of our national orthopaedic hospitals lack materials and equipment required to do their jobs. Patients are daily given a list to buy things required for surgery. Surgeons are performing operations long outdated and keeping patients for long periods in hospital for nature to heal them. This is mostly because they do not have the right equipment and so they make do with what is on ground.

Similarly, medics have to wait for patients to go and buy life-saving drugs before treatment can be carried out. Relatives have to donate blood or you do not get any from the dry blood banks.

Sadly, when the minister comes to visit, he is shown a window dressing: a smokescreen that hides the true situation on ground. Nobody will tell him the truth: that the health of our nation is in coma. Why do hospital managers lie and pretend all is well during these visits?

Relish

Anyway, a patient, a lecturer, was lambasting doctors before I reminded him that teachers were no better. Our educational system has been run aground on their watch and no one is happy with the downturn in the standard of education in the country. University graduates are no better than pupils in their readiness for the workplace.

For example, I drove into a little village in the United Kingdom at night. On reflex, I looked down the street to see if the streetlights were on. It took me only a few seconds to realise that I was not in Abuja and that ‘NEPA’ was not in control here. Still, you wonder. Why is it that not a single university has come up with a plan or proposal for the solution to our energy crisis? No bright sparks? No clue? Where are our engineers? The fact is that no one is happy with anybody as we are all in the same soup of mediocrity.

Okay, let us focus.

Mediocrity is the new excellence

You read in the news that a teaching hospital performed its first open-heart surgery or a kidney transplant in 2016. It is sad to read about this especially when kidney transplants have been performed for over 60 years. The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954 and thousands of kidney transplants are performed yearly in the United States alone.

In fact, even in Nigeria, St. Nicholas hospital performed the first renal transplant surgery over 10 years ago. They were the first hospital to perform kidney transplants in Nigeria and the sub-region and since then have carried out over 300 successful transplants. The hospital has a dedicated renal transplant team, recording a high rate of success.

Talking of success

The problem with kidney transplants or open heart surgery is not whether the hospitals performed the operation or not. Not even whether they used indigenous teams or foreigners, but whether the patients are alive and well, in a month, three months or a year later. That is what we never hear about as the Commissioner for Health or the Chief Medical Director rushes out and invites journalists to a crummy press conference.

Who is monitoring these pronouncements and looking after the interest of the patient? Who goes back six months later to see what progress if any, have been made? Not the Federal Ministry of Health, for sure. They have no clue what is going on in their backyard let alone in a hospital in Lagos State. They will rather blame the budget.

So, for the discerning individual, there is nothing new in reporting kidney transplantation. It has been done before, it is being done daily in other climes and performing your first transplant in 2016 is not worth bringing the drummers out.

Bottom line

Our public hospitals need to keep an eye on the little things instead of relishing in talks about stuff they cannot sustain. Boasting about renal transplants, open-heart surgery and other ‘flash in the pan’ feats does their hundreds of unhappy patients a massive disservice.

Instead, they should concentrate on improving patients’ outcomes following simple abdominal surgeries, pregnancy and delivery and the care of patients with back pain or broken bones. Ensure that patients do not leave their sick beds to go looking for Paracetamol.

That is the meat in the soup.

NB: Please share your experiences and then help by proffering solutions to problems facing our hospitals. Let us all put our thinking caps on; after all we are in this soup together.