Healthcare In Nigeria Revisited
Funny enough, I visited some colleagues. They fall into 2 categories. Those whose private hospitals do not have mortuary departments are in deep poverty. Those having mortuary departments have those departments very busy...with nearly all the corpses sourced from outside...mostly from quacks...and the clinical sections of the hospitals totally barren! It's as if the people prefer to die.
If a Dr counsels them to avoid a quack, they go back to tell the quack what he has said. Even when they die, relatives insist the quacks tried their best anyway! They say people die even when taken abroad! Anytime I try to educate patients, they accuse me of wasting their time and so avoid my practice.
They call me Dr Elejo! Yet, the government advocates for traditional medicine in climes like big cities where Drs almost outnumber patients.... as Drs stay idle. Even medical employers now use auxiliary male nurses as Drs...simply to meet their running cost.
The more skilled a Dr is, the more likely employers would shy away from him for fear of his salary. Public mortuaries are overflowing. As the current scenario is sure to generate more and more corpses, I find the need to brush up my embalment and other mortuary skills. What is wrong in assisting society to prevent excess cadavers from polluting it with their rot? Or keying in to fill a need?
It seems like both the government and the governed have decided to collaborate in this insane scenario....to ensure mass death of the citizenry. Educated citizens who were wary of traditional medicine lost their fears when government started supporting it full blast..and started setting up boards of traditional medicine.
Yet, modern medicine itself had its roots in the traditional...olden Drs were using roots and leaves and barks. If we must rediscover the wheel, why restrict it to human lives. Why not abandon our mobile phones....and clothing...and cars....and planes...and building construction...and use traditional methods to construct skyscrapers?
Yet, our people decide...out of sheer sentiment...and global idiocy....to toy with the human body....the most complex machine ever made. Even as probing as modern medicine is....into the inner recesses of the human anatomy...and histology, there are still much more to be learnt!
Most orthodox drugs have plant origins. If you know the amount of checks and balances that go into such drugs before being approved for societal use...albeit reluctantly by authorities...you would realise the idiocy inherent in approving the consumption of crude raw plant extracts in this modern age! And the consequences are glaring enough...high crude death rate, high maternal mortality rate, high infant mortality rate and other health indices.
Mortuary services would surely sell in the years to come....no matter what we say. These people are simply deaf to hear....and blind to reason. Their minds are made. It's so painful that all my writings to save them from this disaster has come to nought. All that effort. All those strenuous typing....and sleepless nights. What a waste.... Dr Tosin Akindele is a Lagos-based medical practitioner.