Posted on: Thu 01-09-2016

When will the ordinary Nigerian benefit from the national healthcare scheme? 

As I'm leaving for work in the morning of August 16, 2016, I see the woman near the fire, shivering. She is ill. She tells me that her little daughter, Mpempe, of say three or four years old, is also ill. I erroneously call the child, Pempe, and it glues. Anytime I'm passing their house and see her, I will pet her, shouting, "Pempe!" She will run inside their room, complaining to the mother, "Oga has called me Pempe." The mother tells me of how her daughter feels by my call, anytime I see her in front of their cemented mud house. The lively husband is more or less doing nothing. They eat from hand to mouth.

The woman makes sure that her family is happy; always going or coming from the farm with either firewood or loads of cassava or something. I tell her that I shall see to their health problem when I am back. We joke and laugh, as usual. But as I'm leaving, I tell her that I was down about a month ago. the hospital was only giving me drugs anytime that I went there. If not for one woman that advised I should drink water squeezed out of scent 

leaf and vegetable, I would have died. I didn't know that the drugs had sucked and sacked my blood. So, I was suffering from loss of blood, while the hospital continued to give me drugs for treatment. I advise her to be taking same with her children, since we are facing hunger in the country. At the office, I am calculating how much money to give to her while coming back, only to be informed by a neighbor close to my house that Pempe has died. My worry now is that I saw the girl playing and laughing a day before her death and as usual, I called her Pempe. My worry stems from the fact that there are many Pempes out there, dying of preventable deaths.

My worry is not that I'm related to this family by blood, but since I relocated to this remote village, due to the increasing noise in the city I detest with my life, they have shown me likeness that I cannot express just in words. They were not ignorant of what to do to save their child. When I interviewed the woman, she said that the family did their best by going to the patent medicine store, where they do go to, whenever any of them is ill, because they cannot afford going to the 

hospital, with mountainous bills that patients encounter at the hospitals across the country. Within me, I thought that if the national healthcare does not only exist on the pages of the newspapers, perhaps, Pempe would have been alive. I'm not happy that we are so given over to carelessness in Nigeria. The lives of the living seem nothing to the leaders and death, seems nothing to the living. We are living in an era when deaths are celebrated than mourned. The woman is not even properly sound, but what can she do. She has not left her motherly chores, because she has no one to help her do them.

I see the mourning of her child written all over her since then, even though she is not crying every day. I know that in her doset, she must be crying, but pretends in the open that all is well. She cannot leave the death of her daughter behind her in a country where government's overconfidence has bred a lot of carelessness. Pempe's death has caused me to ask about the provision of healthcare in Nigeria which we were told, remains the functions of the three tiers of government: The federal, state, and local government. 

I am yet to see the primary healthcare system being man-aged by the 774 local govern-ment areas (LGAs), as was speculated. If there has been anything like that, there is little or no support that the locals are getting from their respective state ministries of health as well as private medical practitioners. If the primary healthcare was functional at the village, district, and LGA, Pempe could not have died. If the country is yet to func-tion optimally in the primary healthcare delivery, the second-ary healthcare system being titular and managed by the Ministry of Health at the state level is balderdash.

I wonder how patients who have not seen the primary healthcare function would be referred to the secondary healthcare as the case was programmed. I laugh when I hear that the state primary healthcare comprises labora-tory and diagnostic services, rehabilitation, and others. I just laugh. If the primary and second-ary healthcare systems are for the marines, then the tertiary primary healthcare which is said to be provided by teaching hospitals and specialist hospitals is a sorry tale. 

A government that is gasping for the breath cannot work with voluntary and non-governmental organisations, as well as private practitioners, at the level of tertiary healthcare system. Our country behaves like young people that are careless of their virginity; they have it today and by tomorrow, they lose it. The system that our country operates makes one get angry like when an illiterate does.

Imagine that before inde-pendence in 1960, there was the introduction of a 10-year developmental plan (1946-1956) to boost healthcare delivery. There were many health schools and institutions, just as there are today in Ministry of Health, several clinics and health centers, were developed according to this 'plan'. There was great development of this plan by 1980s, when leaders could be said, led with Nigeria at heart. But we lost this 'plan' since democracy. I do not want to say that the carelessness we have come to endure in the hands of our government is a form of cruelty. I'm sober always that the mother of Pempe does not break down and go the way of her daughter. If the Nigerian health insur-

ance scheme had ensured that every Nigerian has access to good health care services, protect Nigerians from the financial burden of medical bills, limit the rise in the cost of health care services, ensure efficiency in health care services, ensure equitable distribution of health care costs among differ-ent income groups - equitable patronage of all levels of health care, maintain high standard of healthcare delivery services within the scheme, improve and harness private sector participation in the provision of healthcare services, ensure adequate distribution of health facilities within the Federation, ensure the availability of funds to the health sector for improved services, the many Pempes, their fathers and mothers would not have died.

There has not been any medical test conducted on the woman, no psychologist or medical advise given to her since she lost her daughter. All that we see is a woman who has been relieved of the fever that made her stayed besides the fire. And there are many of her ilks out there. 

By: Odimegwu Onwumere 

Thisday News

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