Seeking medical care in Nigerian hospitals is fast becoming a risky business, as patients often end up worse off than they were before seeking treatment. The country’s health care system is generally characterised by poor service delivery. This is often manifested in misdiagnosis, application of wrong therapy and an attitude of general apathy or negligence by health workers. It is a situation that inspires little or no hope in the patients or their relations.
But nothing captures the risk posed by hospitals in Nigeria more aptly than a recent remark by Thomas Agan, a professor and Chairman of the Committee of Chief Medical Directors of Federal Tertiary Hospitals in Nigeria, about the high mortality rate attributable to the absence of diligence by health workers. According to him, as much as 90 per cent of deaths recorded in Nigerian hospitals are as a result of the poor attitude of health workers. This is one reason why those who can afford it seek treatment abroad.
But while Agan’s claim may sound alarming, it is not altogether unexpected in a country where health care givers devote more time to wrangling over their welfare than they do trying to save lives. This has often resulted in strikes where patients are left to die, unattended to by those who swore on oath to dedicate their lives to saving others’ lives. Sometimes, when doctors, pharmacists, nurses, laboratory attendants and others within the medical set-up do not all down tools at once, it might be that one group is just warming up for its own strike as the other is resuming.
At other times, when the health care providers are not going on strike over their pay, they are bickering over who, among the various professionals in the sector, should head the medical team. This unhealthy rivalry has extended to the level where doctors insist on being the only ones to be appointed ministers of health, just as other categories of health workers want to be made consultants. There is no way this lack of coordination and unity would not affect the quality of service delivery.
Agan, who is the CMD of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, put it aptly when he said, “For me, welfare issues are necessary in life, but incessant welfare request from health care providers tend to undermine the sector itself.” As if the problem of poor funding of the health sector and the attitude of workers are not bad enough, the situation is sometimes exacerbated by a display of stark incompetence or negligence in the process of health care delivery, often resulting in avoidable deaths.
Nigerians are not likely to forget in a hurry how Gani Fawehinmi, a fiery lawyer and human rights advocate, died a few years ago. He complained that he was diagnosed in Nigeria of pneumonia before he travelled abroad where correct diagnosis revealed that he was suffering from cancer. By that time, it was already late and the country lost one of her best legal minds.
Also very pathetic is the case of two-year-old Christopher Mike-Ozugha, who died last month due to the carelessness of hospital staff. The boy who was having breathing problem was reportedly placed for 30 minutes on an oxygen tank that had run out of oxygen. A late discovery by a nurse and a flurry of belated measures failed to redress the situation, resulting in death.
Another case is now in court over the death of a certain Sandra David, a bank worker who was diagnosed of gall bladder complications. During what was supposed to be a corrective surgery, her lungs were mistakenly punctured. By the time the damage was discovered at a different facility, it was too late to save her life.
Countless cases like these continue to plague health care delivery across the country. There have also been reports of doctors forgetting surgical instruments in a patient’s body, only for the hapless patient to go under the scalpel once again to remove the foreign objects. But Nigerians do not have to be helpless; after all, the services they seek at hospitals are not for free. Something has to be done to bring about change.
Although Agan believes that things would only change when health workers realise that the “health of the patients they are handling could be their own or those of their spouses and siblings,” yet it is clear that only when people start getting punished for their actions will real change come. Over the years, Nigerians have been too willing to move on when they lose their loved ones as a result of negligence by hospitals. But this is something that should be taken up and fought for, to the highest level.
In a publication by Ahmed Adetola-Kazeem, a Mandela Washington Fellow, a victim of medical neglect is advised to pursue civil claims for breaches of duty resulting in personal injury or file a complaint with the regulatory body, in this case the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. The person also has an option of reporting to the police, who would conduct criminal investigation and prosecute or forward the case file to the attorney-general for possible prosecution.
In other parts of the world, establishing the cause of death is taken as a matter of course. And if a case of negligence is established, compensation will not only be sought, the culprit would be made to face the full weight of the law. A good example was the legal battle that followed the death of the pop icon, Michael Jackson. His doctor, Conrad Murray, was convicted of causing his death by providing him an overdose of the powerful anaesthetic, propofol, as a sleep aid.
Besides, the licence of the cardiologist was either suspended or revoked in three states. If Nigerians are desirous of a positive change in the attitude of medical workers to their duty, this is the path to take.
