“A good physician treats the disease, a great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”
– William Osler.
Without delay, it is a matter of fact that Nigerian Doctors and Nurses possibly hold one of the world’s worst records when it comes to doctor-patient relationships. This assertion is far from an exaggeration, as the overwhelming majority of Nigerians would readily concur without any prompting.
Virtually every Nigerian who has encountered the country’s medical personnel, especially within our public health facilities, has a litany of tales to recount. Similar to many other professions, they excel when practicing abroad, but in their homeland, they often resemble more of healthcare adversaries than caregivers. Just inquire with expectant mothers in labor, and they will recount their harrowing experiences within Nigerian hospitals, provided they were fortunate enough to survive.
“In Nigeria, the medical personnel who treat us here, often at government hospitals, are bosses over patients, not caregivers. They shout at patients, maltreat patients, abuse them psychologically and, sometimes, sexually. ”
The universally acknowledged father of modern medicine is Hippocrates of Kos (460-377, BCE). Hippocrates was a Greek physician generally credited with beginning the practice of medicine as a rational science as against reliance on religious or magical beliefs.
Understanding the sacred nature of human life and the enormous responsibility of a Doctor who can determine the fate of a patient under his care and how the Doctor’s conduct, professionalism or lack of it could determine whether a patient lived or died, Hippocrates formulated a set of ethics for Doctors encapsulated into what became the Hippocratic Oath to be sworn to by graduating medical Doctors at the commencement of their practice at what is referred to as “The White Coat Ceremony”.
In layman’s language, the Hippocratic Oath is the commitment of a Doctor to do his/her utmost best to heal or treat his/her patient with all sense of dedication and spirit of humanity. His/her empathy to his patient must be 100% guaranteed and would sacrifice anything to save his/her patient’s life. His/her patient is supposed to be his friend. But that’s a bloody lie in Nigeria. It’s just like saying “The Nigeria Police is your friend”. Sorry, they are not! Ditto Nigeria’s medical personnel – Doctors and Nurses.
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“Some argue, albeit cretinously, that it’s poor conditions of service that make our Doctors and Nurses act so inhumanely. But your conditions of service cannot be equated with the sacred life of a human being that when lost cannot be recovered. It’s gone forever! It leaves families in anguish and pains and gnashing of teeth. Dreams are shattered forever. Quit if you can’t cope! Stop killing people!”
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In different countries all over the world, the Hippocratic Oath has been modified to suit the local environment of each country and modern realities.
The current Doctor’s Oath In Nigeria reads thus “I, name of Doctor, do sincerely and solemnly declare that as a Registered Medical/Dental Practitioner of Nigeria, I shall exercise the several parts of my profession to the best of my knowledge and ability for the good, safety and welfare of all persons committing themselves to my care….”.
Nigeria’s Nurse’s Oath/Pledge goes like this;
“In the full knowledge of the obligation I am undertaking. I promise to care for the sick with all the skill and understanding I possess, without regard to race, creed, colour, politics or social status, sparing no effort to conserve life, to alleviate suffering and promote health…”
Did you notice the “sparing no effort to conserve life” in the Nurse’s Oath? But Nigerian Nurses, except while abroad, behave exactly opposite to that Pledge. They treat their patients like prisoners of war.
In April of 2007, we rushed my pregnant sister-in-law, now late, to Ayinke House in Ikeja all the way from another government hospital in Ijaye-Ojokoro. We got there around 1am.
At the hospital’s reception, we met four nurses. One of them was obviously the most senior. We met a car parked at the entrance of the reception. When we entered, we saw two people, a man and a woman, passionately begging them for a stretcher to bring in their person who had a medical emergency and needed to be attended to immediately. The Nurses hissed as if angered by the intruders disturbing their sleep and peace as if they were hired by the Hospital to come and sleep. That’s a government hospital!
The Senior Nurse nonchalantly told one of her juniors to go and check, not examine, the patient they brought and she rested her head immediately back on the table without looking the way of those of us new arrivals. When my sister-in-law’s husband, a teacher, a civil servant under the same Lagos State government as these Nurses, saw their attitude he couldn’t talk. The activist in me arose and I told them that we had an emergency of a pregnant woman in the car. “Did she register here?”, shouted the senior Nurse at us. Her husband replied no but that she was registered at a government hospital at Ijaye-Ojokoro where we were referred to Ayinke Hospital.
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“It’s the same poor excuse of poor conditions of service that the Nigerian Police personnel use to oppress, extort, rob and murder innocent Nigerians more often than not. Why should Nigerians who suffer the same poor conditions of bad governance be the victims of our Doctors and policemen? It is inhuman, wicked and reprehensible.”
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While they were querying us without as much as standing up to treat our case as an emergency, the other patient in the car gave up the ghost and her people started crying. They were reprimanded and ordered to take their crying and dead relative out the hospital premises. “Àbi àwa la pa ni?”. Are we the ones who killed her? Such wickedness and absolute lack of empathy!
Meanwhile, they rejected my sister-in-law and we had to rush her to a private hospital all the way back to Adura along Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway after Ijaye where the head Doctor there, took one glance at her and immediately ordered her stretchered into the theater where he quickly performed C-section on her. Alas! It was too late. We lost the baby and, later, my sister-in-law.
In Nigeria, the medical personnel who treat us here, often at government hospitals, are bosses over patients, not caregivers. They shout at patients, maltreat patients, abuse them psychologically and, sometimes, sexually.
Some argue, albeit cretinously, that it’s poor conditions of service that make our Doctors and Nurses act so inhumanely. But your conditions of service cannot be equated with the sacred life of a human being that when lost cannot be recovered. It’s gone forever! It leaves families in anguish and pains and gnashing of teeth. Dreams are shattered forever. Quit, if you can’t cope! Stop killing people!
It’s the same poor excuse of poor conditions of service that the Nigerian Police personnel use to oppress, extort, rob and murder innocent Nigerians more often than not. Why should Nigerians who suffer the same poor conditions of bad governance be the victims of our Doctors and policemen? It is inhuman, wicked and reprehensible.
A boy who was taken to the hospital for medical attention to get healed suddenly found his intestine missing! He had to pay with his life due to no fault of his. He died because someone stole or lost his intestine. His intestine simply disappeared under the watchful eyes of the medical teams of two hospitals. One was private, the other was Lagos State University Teaching Hospital. The boy died!
The mother is devastated and inconsolable!
Everyone involved must be arrested, prosecuted for deliberate manslaughter and jailed accordingly. There must be justice for Master Adebayo Akin-Bright for his soul to rest in peace.
In a shocking, but not so surprising exposé recently, it was discovered that one ‘Doctor’ Noah Kekere, aka Dr Yellow, has been harvesting the organs of his victims – yes, victims, not patients – for over 18 years in Plateau State in the name of performing surgery to heal them. But his escapades only got exposed recently.
We are victims, not patients of Nigerian public hospitals and, in some cases, private ones, too.
It is because of the inhuman treatments that Nigerians suffer at the hands of government hospital Doctors and Nurses that motivate Nigerians to seek medical treatments at tradomedical outlets and, even, from quacks. For the rich and powerful in government, they seek medical interventions abroad for themselves leaving other Nigerians at the mercy of the villainous, barbarous and perverted medical system debilitating the physical and mental health of Nigerians without succor.