That Nigeria’s Health sector is in comatose is an open secret. And the fact that we’ve failed to do something concrete about the mess in the sector has further exposed our inadequacies as a country.
Past and present governments have not shown the necessary attitude needed for the development of the sector, as a result, all they do is to “patch-patch” it till the end of their tenure and the status quo continues.
Our leaders in an “I don’t care” attitude has ditched the country’s health care in preference for foreign hospitals thereby leaving the rot unattended to.
Former President Ibrahim Babangida patronised the German hospitals till the end of his administration and this continued with his successors like the late President Yar’Adua who patronised several foreign hospitals till he passed on. The incumbent president has spent the better part of 2017 in United Kingdom hospitals treating an unknown ailment.
As a result, the health sector in the country has been enmeshed in one crisis or the other, from unlimited strikes to non-payment of salaries, ill-equipped hospitals among others, of course, the leaders don’t care about the sector.
The alarm raised by the wife of the President as it relates to the Aso Rock clinic was the final confirmation of the rot in the country’s health care system. The Aso Rock clinic is in a poor state as the necessary equipment needed for the functionality of the hospital is absent despite the billions of funds budgeted for the clinic.
This shows the non-commitment of the federal government to make the hospital a working one. The news from Lagos as it concerns the massive brain drain in the state that has seen the exit of over eight hundred Doctors in the past two years has opened a new source of concern.
Findings reveal that these doctors had to leave as a result of poor working conditions and non-implementation of the agreed salary scale between the government and the medical guild.
In Osun, among other states in Nigeria, Doctors are being owed for months and there is no commitment to their payment from the Government, yet the government is planning to spend N69 Billion for airport construction.
Nigeria sure needs to rejig its health sector and build a working sector for the sake of the masses.
