Sordid state of our health facilities

Though it has been public knowledge all the time, yet whenever one encounters our health care system, its parlous state never ceases to surprise. It is true that the coronavirus pandemic has caught most countries of the world unprepared. Nevertheless, most of the countries seemed to rally quickly to have the essentials on the ground to fight the virus.

In Nigeria, we can say Lagos and Abuja have done well to prepare. Lagos is lucky to have the presence of the headquarters of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) with the facilities for the Lassa and Ebola epidemics in place. A proactive Lagos State Government, sufficiently schooled by past epidemics, might also have been of help. Abuja is of course the Federal Capital, but a forward-looking minister was able to gather monies from donors to provide facilities to fight the pandemic. At the last count, Abuja had close to 1,000 beds exclusively for the pandemic.

One cannot say the same for the rest of the country where it has been rather slow-going in the provision of facilities to fight the pandemic. What we have witnessed so far, particularly in the northern states, is just tardiness in enlightening the public and equipping the health facilities and personnel. In addition, the NCDC took its time to spread its testing centres making many huge population centres vulnerable to a large number of unexplained deaths. This started manifesting in Kano and Borno but it has now spread to neighbouring Jigawa, Yobe, Bauchi, Zamfara and Sokoto.

May be the seasonal heat that usually is harbinger of its own epidemics, probably the fasting that had come in these unusually hot times, nobody can really put a finger on the cause. However, nobody can doubt the fact that these rash of deaths had exposed the underbelly of our health facilities. Nothing underlies that than the reports of the harrowing experiences of patients who tried to access basic health services in their hours of dire needs. Those that died did not even have the comfort of dying with dignity. Perhaps none of the deaths exemplified this than how a former Governor of Borno State, Mohammed Goni was tossed around before he finally gave up in the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) without getting the urgent attention he needed.

I never had the privilege of close acquaintance with Governor Mohammed Goni. When in 1979 he was elected Borno State governor, I was still in the lower admin ranks in Chad Basin Development Authority. And when I came into the Governor’s Office in the mid-1980s he was already in retirement. Though, I spent many years in the Governor’s Office, I do not remember having a close encounter with him. He must have kept a very low profile. It was only when I began to write this column that I realised that he kept an eagle eye on this page because he called me a number of times to appraise and admonish as the case might have been.

A few days after he died, his son Umar appeared on an AIT programme bemoaning the treatment his father received from the medical services. His narratives went viral in the social media. I share excerpts from the narratives with readers, believing that it would prick the conscience of our policy makers and implementers to do the needful to the health sector.

UMAR GONI: “You know I recently lost a relative, two days ago, who was a former governor of Borno State. He encountered some complications around 9-10 pm, and we had to rush him to the teaching hospital. Do you know to my surprise we couldn’t find a doctor? None of the consultants was around, once they tell them that a patient is here, all of them just missed out, because they feel every patient is a COVID-19 patient. So, we had no option; he couldn’t be admitted, we were not given a bed, even the primary health care outreach we couldn’t get it, first aid treatment, we couldn’t get it.

“We had to rush him back to another private hospital. When we went to the private hospital, there were no facilities: we could only get drip and I think some glucose, to at least, just to revive him. But we couldn’t get the oxygen we were looking for, because he needed a lot of oxygen to revamp himself. He was breathing heavily, so I said ok, let us leave him here, let us leave him on break. Then, let us go and find another alternative, another private hospital. So, we went to another private hospital. There we got oxygen, I mean one oxygen cylinder, but the problem was that the oxygen cylinder too was leaking. We thought we had gotten a solution, but when they started treating him, the cylinder was leaking, so it couldn’t work out.So, we had no option than just to watch him, I mean just to manage his symptoms, using drip.

“In the morning, we called somebody close to us that was in government. When he came, he called for a primary health care ambulance, brand new ambulances! The first one came, we thought we will get some paramedic inside, nothing! A brand-new ambulance with no paramedic, how?

“When the second one came, some items were available but some were not there. Because you will see the oxygen cylinder, but the top was not there. The other vehicle had the bottom and the top was not there, and vice versa. In the other one, the bed was broken. Brand new ambulances, can you imagine? So, we had no option, the private hospital had to refer us back to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. Again!

“So, they gave us referral note, we used the ambulance to bring him back to the UMTH. Even at that instance, for the staff of the UMTH to admit him, was almost leading to a kind of quarrel. Because we had the state commissioner of health who was the secretary of the COVID-19 Committee in Borno state. He had to intervene, before they admitted him.  I think honestly speaking they were scared, some of them if you had asked them, they will tell you that government has not provided us with protective kits, so we cannot take that risk to attend to patients that we don’t know what the ailment is all about. Because once your temperature is high, they always think you are a COVID-19 positive, they don’t look at other symptoms.

“And honestly speaking, they don’t have the kits needed to attend to patients, like the face mask and things like that. One of them was asking me when I told him, ‘look my dad is on oxygen and is finished, do you know what he told me’, he was asking me whether I have facemask to give him?  I said that is not my job, it is yours. He said ok, let me go and look for one – – “

“I don’t know what to call it. The whole thing has drifted, I don’t know how the common man fares, if somebody of my father’s calibre could not access primary health care or first aid, then I think there is a problem – – – eventually we lost our dad that same night.”