Treating Malaria with Cough Syrup — A Nigerian Story
May the good Lord grant the bereaved family of the deceased the fortitude to bear their loss.
I saw this video of Dino Melaye and his ragtag gang of makeshift investigators attempting to bully the Doctors of Garki Hospital into accepting full responsibility of the death of the corper that was shot by a SARS official; the same SARS that we have been lamenting about for a while now and Dino Melaye and DPO have refused to do anything about, and I have decided to offer my comments.
The exchanges in this video are ridiculous, I do not even know how to start. The arguments are baseless and devoid of any ability to hold water. This is what you get from a makeshift committee set up to address issues which they know nothing about. One can only wonder if this was solely intended to mock the bereaved.
Dino Melaye made a statement about the DPO walking in and saying “commence treatment” and implied that it meant treatment had not commenced.
That is a useless statement and should be struck off the records. What if I walked into that room at the time he made that statement and said “commence proceedings” would that imply that proceedings have not commenced?
You see foolishness is something I grew up thinking people ought to be ashamed of. But to my utter amazement they wear it on their sleeves and even use it to oppress other people who in fact are less foolish than they are, which is sad.
The DPO is not a doctor, the DPO does not have a full grasp of what “treatment” is in medicine. Treatment can be anything from watchful waiting to interventional catheterization and beyond.
Let us call this what it is; a shameless attempt by the politician to score cheap points.
Moreso, some hospitals have a policy that treatment cannot commence if you do not make payment. Anything that is done for a patient prior to making payment is a favour and should be seen as that. The sooner we accept this fact and get to work on our health insurance system the better for us.
The sooner we accept that healthcare is a business and should be treated as such and that to sustain health facilities funding has to be provided and payments have to be guaranteed, the better for us.
From basic primary care to life threatening emergencies, the people working in healthcare need funding to provide their services and they must ensure that these services are paid for. If you don’t want to have to fork out large sums of money at inconvenient times when you need emergency healthcare then enrol for health insurance. The MD stated that payment was made only after the lady had passed on. If that’s the case then the hospital really went out of their way to save the lady.
Furthermore, Dino Melaye added to the ridicule when he said “so you have to go and get a computer to browse and if the network is down for one hour,… yen yen yen” if he does not know that there is such a thing as a smart phone and you can access the web on it then he has no business being on that committee.
Again, if network can be down for one hour in a country where he is a Senator, it is an indictment on him and the rest of his gang in government. Why should internet be down for one hour and nobody is held responsible? The internet service providers that charge for services they refuse to provide are the ones that should be answering questions not the doctors being accused of refusing to provide services they have not been paid for.
And while we’re at it let us question the people in government that allow internet service providers get away with poor service. Yes, if we want to solve a problem let us solve every part of it. When your car breaks down do you just go and paint it? I guess not.
And yes doctors look things up all the time. People should learn that. And it’s a good thing to confirm things when you don’t know rather than doing the wrong thing because you don’t want to be seen looking things up. There are reference guides in hard copy books and e-books and on the internet.
As a doctor one of my crucial investments is fast reliable internet. I used to pay 17,500 naira monthly during my days as a houseofficer just to get reliable internet because it is a necessity to ensure smooth communication with other members of my medical team.
And Oga DPO that they tried to enlighten on the technicalities of inserting a chest tube but was forming adamant seems to have forgotten that it was not a Doctor that pulled the trigger that killed the lady and if he knew what a chest tube was he probably would not be asking that redundant question. We need to desist from this practice of scapegoating and looking to score cheap political points. This is more of systemic malfunction than negligence.
This is the result of long periods of corruption and gross negligence of the institutions saddled with the tasks of making things work. Rather than looking for who scapegoat, we should task ourselves with rebuilding our systems from the ground up. This is a sad case and there is enough blame to go around; from the person that pulled the trigger to the inefficiencies in healthcare delivery. Yes, there may have been inefficiencies, and trained eyes can spot them. But definitely not Dino Melaye and his ragtag group of makeshift investigators.
If we fail to learn, we will be here again sooner than later to question another set of doctors in the name of investigation. Yes it will stroke the fragile egos of those doing the questioning and lambasting but what we must know is that for every such committee that has to be convened, there is a life that has been lost needlessly to systemic malfunction.
This is like taking cough syrup for malaria. You enjoy the sweet taste of the syrup for a while, but death is imminent.
