As Nigeria battles to reduce the incidence of medical tourism, the decision by President Buhari to travel to London for a 10-day rest during which he will seek medical attention for a recurring ear-infection, is lamentable and most embarrassing to Mr. President and the country. What is even more worrisome is the indecorous manner the Presidency handled public criticisms of the trip. It is doubly insulting that the President; whose duty it is, in the first instance, to raise the standard of health care delivery in the country, would be seeking medical attention abroad for an ear malignancy that Nigerian hospitals can handle. Even just for reasons of decency, of self-respect, a sense of propriety and consideration for best practices in public office, Buhari should have resisted the temptation to travel abroad and save from further denigration, his person, the office he holds, the institution of the Presidency which he heads and all Nigerians as a people. The country deserves nothing less from a change-promising president.
Without unduly emphasizing it, discerning Nigerians are becoming increasingly restless over Buhari’s frequent travels, fueling suspicions that all is not well with the president. Before leaving the country, Buhari told reporters at the airport that he had complied with the necessary constitutional provisions, including formally notifying the National Assembly about his trip. “I have already told Nigerians that I am going for 10 days to get my ear checked.” On how to calm tension of over the nation’s president falling sick, Buhari fired back: “Is there anybody that doesn’t fall sick?” But despite Buhari’s acknowledgment of his ear infection, his Special Adviser, Femi Adesina, insisted rather patronizingly that, “illness” was not the appropriate word to be used in the case of the president. He said Buhari would only use the period of “his rest” to see an ear specialist.
This kind of nuanced and unconvincing explanation can only emanate from a mindset, sycophantically concerned about charges directed at his boss; rather than objectively addressing a precarious state of affairs demanding proper communication. The finality with which a somewhat thoughtless defence of a manageable challenge was portrayed showed a government’s communication laced with hopelessness and frustration. And this brings us to the crux of the matter: why did Femi Adesina feel compelled to lie about the president’s trip? Buhari is human. As a human being, he is likely to suffer occasional bouts of ill health. There is nothing in human nature that says the President cannot fall ill. Buhari is rumored to suffer from Ménière’s disease, which can lead to permanent deafness. According to the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), “Ménière’s disease is a disorder of the inner ear that causes severe dizziness, ringing in the ears, hearing loss, and a feeling of fullness or congestion in the ear.
Medical experts have said the president’s travelling abroad to seek medical treatment is an affront to their profession because they have the centers, facilities and expertise inside Nigeria to handle the most complicated ear infection. The experts appealed to the president to show committed leadership by rethinking the foreign medical travel and explore options of getting treated at home. Their admonition came as State Minister for Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, indicted Nigerian elites who prefer travelling abroad for medical care rather than patronize Nigerian hospitals. The issue of medical tourism which the president’s trip exemplifies has been a thorny one. Some analysts believe Nigeria spends N1 billion annually on medical tourism.
According to the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), over 5,000 Nigerians travel to India and other countries monthly for medical treatment. The association reported that, Nigeria loses over $500m annually to this unhealthy practice, with $260m going to India. This unwholesome attitude by public officials is no doubt strengthened by the fact that the cost of such treatment is borne by the taxpayer. The import of government’s heavy spending on overseas medical treatment for its officials, at the expense of equipping local hospitals, is the erroneous impression that public officers are more important than those who voted them into such offices. Government ordinarily should spend the $500m to equip public hospitals and raise them to world class standards.
As if this was not bad enough, the British National Health Service (NHS) fact sheet on the number of registered doctors in the country, published by the Daily Mail online showed that some 3,936 Nigerian doctors; most of them trained in Nigeria, are now practicing in the United Kingdom. Added to the estimated 4,000 Nigerian doctors practicing in the USA, it becomes obvious that Nigeria has become a manufacturing plant for the production of medical doctors/dentists for the healthcare systems of developed countries. Nigeria currently has about 71,740 medical and dental practitioners listed on the official register of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), with less than half of them (about 27, 000) currently practicing in Nigeria. This is bad news; and one more reminder, if at all another was needed, that the problem of brain drain in the health sector, is now assuming a crisis dimension.
In the face of this embarrassment, however, the Nigerian government has its work well defined. Local hospitals are not short of qualified personnel as Nigerian doctors are amongst the best in many parts of the world. The tragic irony is that most of the hospitals Nigerian leaders travel to, for medical attention are manned by Nigerian doctors some of who were trained in various teaching hospitals at home, before they migrated out of the country due to poor working conditions. Worse still, those teaching hospitals have become a ghost of themselves due to years of neglect. And that is the risk ordinary Nigerians are exposed to. Many Nigerians have been sent to untimely demise on account of wrong diagnosis and poor state of local hospitals.
There are certainly real suffocating challenges in Nigeria and indeed in the nation’s healthcare system which continually promote medical tourism and the huge emigration of doctors to other countries with better work environment and satisfactory conditions of service. President Buhari must address this anomaly quickly, not only for its implication for the health of Nigerians, but also for its potential political mileage and goodwill. There is so much money spent on these trips which should have been channeled into solving other problems like non-payment of public servants’ salaries and rising unemployment as banks continue to sack workers. Nigeria will stand or fall on account of how it tackles the challenges in the health sector; and the measures taken to reverse the present trend, where the President has to travel abroad to seek treatment for something as basic as an ear infection, even as Nigeria continues to produce medical doctors for other countries.
