It is now clear that tardiness and empty bureaucratic noise in high places have taken the place of needed actions to tackle the Ebola challenge that has become a national emergency. What is more, it is also evident that Nigerians did not have to wait for the World Health Organisation (WHO) to tell them that the Ebola crisis was more serious than had been thought. But as rhetoric and blame game creeps in daily to drive fear into the complex matrix, there are weightier matters of morality and innovative thinking, which should take precedence. And the time to take action is now!
What is the future of Nigeria’s healthcare system? It is irrefutable that the system does face a massive array of problems. It is also irrefutable that governments at all levels have massive human and economic resources available to policy-makers in principle but inaccessible, in fact, to the people who need them the most. This situation seems exacerbated by severe service needs, prevailing philosophies of incrementalism rather than innovation, substitution of rhetoric for responsibility and policies constructed upon fragmentary information.
Innovative thinking, Nano-Silver, Colloidal-Silver and so on! What are all these? Take the case of malaria. Bernardino Ramazzini (November 3, 1633 – November 5, 1714), an Italian Physician is considered to be the founding father of occupational medicine. Ramazzini supported the use of the quinine-rich bark cinchona , from which quinine is derived, in the treatment of malaria. Many falsely claimed that quinine was toxic and ineffective. Ramazzini recognised its importance. He is quoted: “It (quinine) did for medicine what gun powder did for war.”
Similarly when a boat is sinking and at the point of being engulfed by water, and you think or know that by rocking the sinking boat, it may float back, then do it, because if you don’t you’ll be damned!
It would seem that the working assumptions regarding the management of the health systems in general, and management of innovation in particular, are grossly deficient in Nigeria. Indeed, the current notions may be quite dysfunctional for successively responding to health problems. In which case, it becomes necessary to search for alternatives in policies and programmes!
On the raging Ebola crisis, authorities of Federal and state governments appear to be waiting for the victims to die. But this newspaper is fully persuaded that help, yes, help, from those that have had experiences in management of this scourge must be sought. Not scandalous importation of pesticides instead of trial drugs the global community knows are available in say, Emory University, USA.
Specifically, this newspaper believes that the medical personnel and, especially, the female consultant, Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh, deserve better attention than they have received from the authorities so far. It was Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh, a Senior Consultant-Physician and Endocrinologist at the First Consultant Hospital in Lagos, who suspected that the late Mr. Patrick Sawyer, the American-Liberian who brought this calamity upon Nigeria must have Ebola, rather than malaria. This young Consultant-Physician and Endocrinologist deserves not only salutations but also gratitude of the whole nation. A quick thinker and connector of thoughts and words who is reputed in the medical profession to put her patients’ interests, including any sick person known or unknown, before her interests, she is a giant of the medical profession.
Now there is a new dimension to medical practice in Nigeria where medical doctors are at war with their country in the face of this medical emergency. In the United States where only two of their citizens were involved, in a rare show of patriotism, passion and service to humanity, medical personnel that had been approved to begin their vacation, called it off while awaiting the arrival of their sick compatriots from Liberia. What manner of medical doctors do we have in our country that cannot separate a call to national duty and sacred service to humanity at such a time as this from their enlightened self-interest being pursued through their tango with the federal and state authorities?
Don’t we need the services of Nigeria’s medical experts and indeed all knowledgeable volunteers now to tackle all the impediments arising from this medical emergency in an unfortunate situation in which even cultural taboos have obviously obscured a sense of decency and simple medical procedures?
There is a national crisis of monumental proportion as the WHO declared not long ago. But while all efforts are being made to contain this scourge, all the authorities in Nigeria and Lagos State should always remember that Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh and other doctors and staff who helped to quarantine the late Liberian, Sawyer, should not be only managed to die. It is not too much to ask authorities in the U.S. for urgent medical assistance for the victims in First Consultants Medical Centre where specifically, so much steam was taken out of what would have befallen the nation, after all. The Americans dispatched two well-equipped aircraft to Liberia to convey safely their only two afflicted citizens who were aid workers or volunteers in Liberia! What has Nigeria done to the medical doctors and nurses who saved this nation from incalculable calamity by standing up for the nation and humanity even at the risk of contracting the menace and bugbear called Ebola?
These men and women have earned the gratitude of this nation and deserve the best care from Nigeria.
