As Nigeria battles to reduce the incidence of medical tourism, the decision by President Muhammadu to seek medical attention abroad, is lamentable and most embarrassing to the President and the country. Buhari left Abuja on Tuesday for London, UK for a routine medical check-up. According to a statement by the President’s special adviser on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, Buhari is due back in mid-April. But more egregious and doubly insulting is the fact 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 a health condition that Nigerian hospitals can certainly handle. At a moment when the nation is still grappling with a resurgent coronavirus pandemic and rising insecurity; even just for reasons of decency, 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, to whom much has been given; and from whom much is expected.
The medical trip to London is Buhari’s first since 2018. It comes at a time when the life of the average Nigerian has become short and brutish and the headlines in any given day in Nigeria sounds like a reading from the Book of Lamentation. The nation is bleeding and the president is AWOL abroad. This is most unconscionable and insensitive, as it is vexatious and Buhari has no excuse. It gives the impression that Buhari is idle and has so much time in his hands. A president should identify with the people in their greatest hour of need. The economy is comatose and presidential leadership is required to ensure all hands are on deck to get the country back on track. But Mr. President is relaxing in London at a time the nation badly needs his attention. Apart from being a deliberate squandering of public funds and sheer misuse of quality work-time, the trip to London at a time of great national peril and uncertainty, is a telling sign of a weak governance culture. It does no good to the image and reputation of the President who has failed to display self-discipline, gumption, political sagacity and feel the pangs of responsibility in a clear display of focused leadership as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
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 health condition. 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 after Health Minister, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, indicted Nigerian elites who prefer travelling abroad for medical care rather than patronize Nigerian hospitals. The issue of medical tourism which Buhari’s trip exemplifies has been a thorny one. Some analysts believe Nigeria spends N1billion 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 NMA 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 pipeline for the production of medical doctors 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 already passed crisis proportion and is worsening.
In the face of this embarrassment, however, 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 their untimely death 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 continuously 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 overseas trips which should have been invested into solving other problems. 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 medical attention, even as Nigeria continues to produce medical doctors for other countries.
He is due back in the country in the second week of April 2021.
