This is crazy! I cannot contain my anger any longer and as you read this you would not but feel repulse about my choice of words and the twist in my language. What the hell is happening in this sick country? We have been raped with deceits so much that our vagina of thought is so slack that the penis of reason cannot make us achieve any climax of development or rationality again. This sickness seems not to defer to our poorly trained doctors’ diagnosis. I cannot swallow the pills of this deceit called promises from my leaders any more.
This is crazy! I cannot contain my anger any longer and as you read this you would not but feel repulse about my choice of words and the twist in my language. What the hell is happening in this sick country? We have been raped with deceits so much that our vagina of thought is so slack that the penis of reason cannot make us achieve any climax of development or rationality again. This sickness seems not to defer to our poorly trained doctors’ diagnosis. I cannot swallow the pills of this deceit called promises from my leaders any more.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
What has gone real wrong that I have resulted to profanity to irritate you?
I have been away for the last four weeks in the US as a fellow of the scoliosis research society to undertake spine deformity training at the New York University Hospital for Joint Diseases. The experience was a soothing balm to the feelings of desolation and frustration of working in a country where the system throws brick at your effort everyday in the course of performing an honest duty. Do you want me to write about the dedication of doctors like Baron Lonner, Thomas Enrico and others to spine development and research, the cordiality of their working environment, the responsibility of the system to serve the patients, the genuine mentoring of residents and medical students! I would leave this story for another time where I would do justice to a society that trained me in spine deformity and then go out of her way to provide the equipment for me to bring home to do the work I have been trained on.
On arrival at the Nnamdi Azikwe International airport Abuja, I was interrogated by the NAFDAC agent who queried my intention to bring in donated spine instrument that would benefit my patients. I learnt from her that for me to bring in donated spine instrument to Nigeria, I was to obtain permission from their office in Abuja! I was made to sign an undertaking to appear in their office to explain and test some of the instrument that I have brought to determine if this can be allowed on Nigerian. I am one of the only two spine surgeons in Nigeria serving a population of 150 million people. I was so angry that I felt like throwing away the donated instrument set. A day later I would operate on an old woman who has not walked for a long while and she would be on her feet by this week. I looked back to wonder at the action of this NAFDAC agent and I laughed. I feel she would better serve Nigeria by going to Onitsha to arrest people who use can to sell antibiotics and analgesic till this very moment. I also hope if that would be difficult, she should stay at the airport to arrest the prayers of most of the Northern governors who have gone on lesser hajj to pray and receive the vision of the person to succeed them in 2011 election. Such prayers should be arrested by the NAFDAC agent because of it toxic effect on the political minds of Nigerians! I am yet to report at the NAFDAC office because each day I have been swamped by patients who need my expertise and I am always too tired by 11.00pm every night that I reach home to get to their office.
I resumed at work to meet posters of presentation by group of Indian doctors facilitated by some daft Nigerian doctors who are hell bent on promoting medical tourism to hospitals in India. Can the same Indian doctors take Nigeria doctors into the hospitals in India to market their hospitals? I do not have problems with the India doctors! I am mad at the Nigerian doctors who willfully because of a thousand dollar commission on each patients sent to India would ultimately provide the euthanasia ceremony to the sick health care delivery system of my country.
What is sad here is our own doctors’ inability to understand the socio-economic underpinnings that gave rise to the development of the healthcare system in India. At the time of the great financial turmoil in the third world in the 70s through the 80s, the Indian professional left in drove to many developed countries including a developing but rich country like Nigeria to educate, hone their skills and integrate with the philosophies of economic growth of the countries they migrated to. These people left without support of their government. Two decades later, these people began to emigrate back home to develop India healthcare systems, IT and educational institutions. This is what you see and feel now about the transformation of the India economy and rise.
The sad aspect is that our own professionals who left in drove almost a decade after the Indian’s professional exodus have refused to come back though they remit money home but too insignificant to lead a culture of re-awakening that has helped the Indians achieve their new found status. There is a loud noise by the medical consultants in Nigeria to force the government pay them to go for clinical attachment overseas so as to remain relevant in the healthcare delivery system. My opinion is that this is another fraud by this group to heat up the system. I believe that as professionals, we are members of many associations that encourage the members to visit different facilities in different parts of the world through scholarships and fellowships. It is the young ones that should be invested on to participate in training programmes that would ultimately benefit this country. These seniors should be allowed to continue to rape the system through their commissions from the Indians till the young ones would flush them out of the system. It is pertinent to note that within the cries and intimidation of these senior doctors, there were a lot of doctors amongst these people who have gone to train themselves with their money and are back home not lost abroad, silently improving our health care delivery systems. Notable amongst this group is M.E Ugbeye silently planting the seed of Arthroplasty in Nigeria, M.F Alimi whose contribution to the practice of Spine surgery in Nigeria would be someday written and many others, Professor BA Solagberu who has been mentoring young orthopaedic surgeons to take up research.
I have also arrived to discover that the medical school of the University of Abuja does not have approval of the Nigeria University Commission (NUC) before the school started admitting to train medical students. The school started admitting students in 2005/2006 academic session without standard laboratory to conduct dissection in Anatomy, to conduct experiments in human physiology and biochemistry. The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria refused to accredit this school and hence the students were not allowed to take their first professional examinations since 2008. Inspite of this, the school kept admitting more sets promising them Eldorado, yet structure to ensure accreditation were never put in place. Now, the NUC has woken up to pronounce that the medical school is a farce! What have these regulatory bodies been doing that they allowed the brightest students through the UME to be subjected to this mess. How could the parents have watched for five years the rape of their sweats by characters that would produce half baked doctors through fraudulent scheming? I think that the government should arrest the former VC, the incumbent VC, the heads of regulatory bodies like JAMB, MDCN and others who have messed up these bright students.
I have also come back to hear bad news about my Alma Mata, the National Orthopaedics Hospital (NOH) Lagos whose soul has been sold finally to the devil. At the time I was leaving Nigeria, the AOSpine International Aspire programme released her report on the training programmes in the hospital in December 2009 and the comment was that the hospital lack basic hygiene to engender good surgical procedure in the theatre. They also stated that the anaesthetists lack necessary skill to participate in spine surgery and would need retraining. These problems have not been addressed till now.
There are some of my senior colleagues in this institution who are suppose to put heads together on the problem yet are busy ‘shouting’ that employing a young paediatric orthopaedic surgeon by the hospital would be discriminatory. They posit that there is no need to introduce sub-specialization in this hospital that has developed prostatic enlargement at 60-yrs of her miserable existence! In the last few years there has been clamour for sub-specialization and some characters, their names I would not mention; to borrow from Al Pacino in the ‘scent of a woman’ have vehemently rejected this idea with a putrid rationale that the hospital is not ready at 60 years. The introduction of the spine department in the hospital is still a bitter meat in the sore mouth of these characters; this feeling has been effectively harness to fight against the employment of a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon.
Is there hope for NOH, Lagos where her throat is in the vice grip of short-sighted characters who has just a few year left in the system! In America where I have just gone to train, the spine surgeons have also branched into those that take on spine deformity, degenerative diseases, and trauma. Yet some of our senior colleagues seat in the comfort of their inadequacies to make far reaching myopic resolutions that would further haemorrhage the near asphyxiated hospital.
Take heart my fellow young colleagues, if she was not asphyxiated for too long to develop a cerebral palsy then you would one day with your training through AO International in Europe, America, Asia and even South Africa would have abundant skills to nurse her back to good health. Did the great America cyclist, Louis Armstrong not battle life threatening prostate cancer to win the Tour d’France seven times?
As for me, I have made my choice not afraid to speak up! Are you also ready to do same? Time would judge.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });