Sonnie Ekwowusi urges the health minister to pay more attention to basic health issues
IT IS ABSURD, IF NOT DOWNRIGHT STUPID TO ARGUE THAT THE SOLUTION TO NIGERIA'S DEPLORABLE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM AT THE MOMENT IS POPULATION CONTROL VIA CONTRACEPTION AND ABORTION
My UNTH consultant friend further shocked s me with the stories of how poor children in Enugu, Nsukka, Abakaliki and their surrounding villages regularly die in their respective omes from preventable illnesses and from lack of simple vaccination and immunisation. This is not a peculiar Enugu State tragedy. It cuts across the country. For example, if you step outside the South-East and travel to, maybe, the South-West, you will find similar cases. Take a trip to Bomo, Kano, Zamfara or Sokoto States and you will fall short of words to describe the miserable lives of so many women and children who also lack access to basic primary health care. And if you dare visit the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps, you will shed tears after seeing the uncountable number of children and women dying from lack of food and ineadequate medical attention.
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It is baffling that amid the aforesaid health challenges, Health Minister Prof. Isaac Adewole is more interested in population reduction even though it is not our priority at the moment. In any case, Prof. Adewole is appointed a health minister not a population controller minister. So, why should he be exerting his energies in population control matters and leaving unresolved the more urgent primary health care challenges? Is Adewole not aware that due to the exorbitant ante-natal and post-natal bills, many Nigerian pregnant women are still delivered of their babies at home by traditional birth attendants and in the process many lose their lives? Has Adewole forgotten that primary health care and outpatient clinic services are yet to be decentralised to reach the suffering and dying women in every state, local government and ward in Nigeria? If the answers to the above queries are in the affirmative, why is Adewole seeking alibi in questionable population control issues instead of focusing on the real health needs of the Nigerian people? It is absurd, if not downright stupid to argue that the solution to Nigeria's deplorable health care system at the moment is population control via contraception and abor-tion. Why do we fail to get our priorities right in Nigeria? You may ask: what is the business of the health minister with population control? Why is UNFPA Executive Director Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin always pressuring every Nigerian government to make abortion and contraception accessible even to Nigerian teens in secondary schools? You will recall that Prof. Osotimehin pressurised the Jonathan administration to legalise abortion and contraception in Nigeria but failed in that bid. For example, on page 36 of THISDAY Newspaper of November 22, 2012, Osotimehin stated that only investment in abortion and contraception would lead to increased productivity and economic development in Nigeria. Anyway, having failed to get the Jonathan government to legalise abortion and contraception, the same Osotimehin is now mounting pressure on the Buhari government to make abortion and contraception more accessible to a greater number of Nigerians. Two weeks ago Prof. Osotimehin approached President Muhammadu Buhari with the aforesaid demand. This is sad. I am sure the president is not listening to Osotimehin and his ilk. In a country where the average citizen suffers from genteel poverty and illnesses, it is illogical to demand that the Buhari government should spend its hard earned income on trivialities.
Health minister Adewole argues that population reduction will boost the economy and improve the quality of life for women and children. This is not true. As I said earlier, the best way to improve the quality of life for Nigerian women and children is through the provision of qualitative health care that is accessible, acceptable and affordable to Nigerian women and children. I still maintain that Adewole is not properly focused otherwise he would have known by now that now is not the best time for population reduction cam-paigns. We need a more focused health minister. Whereas the Buhari government is bent on diversifying the Nigerian economy through people-oriented agriculture in order to come out of the present economic recession, Prof. Adewole is promoting an anti-people population reduction policy. Agriculture thrives on population. Thus population growth is not a threat to Nigeria. Instead of seeing population as a threat, population should be seen as a great catalyst for economic growth. The vibrant young people that constitute the bulk of Nigerian population are indeed a vibrant work force that should be used to fast-track Buhari's agricultural revolution.
In case Prof. Adewole does not know, countries like China, Bangladesh, India and many Asia countries have reaped enormous demographic dividends from their respective large populations in the last 30 years. The Chinese economy has been growing steadily in the last 15 years. The Chinese are everywhere today thanks to their huge population. The demographic catastrophe that hit China as a result of its one child policy has forced it to recently reverse the one child policy. Therefore a large population is an asset not a liability. The popular aphorism is that population is power. Population is money too. Small wonder virtually all the big-player telecommunications companies have invested in the Nigerian market. They are obviously reaping huge profit from Nigeria's large population.
Source: This Day News
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