Saving Life’s By Taking A Stand

The health sector in many undeveloped and developing countries including Nigeria is in a critical condition. So many years of underfunction, inadequate staffing, very poor infrastructure and equipments, insufficient remuneration have created a weak system barely able to support its own weight. Health professionals, particularly Doctors and Nurses are overworked on a daily basis and underpaid.
Hospitals are always over crowded and under-equipped, sometimes lack in the most basic supplies. For both the professionals and the patients, most times it is really devastating.

I’m not writing this because of what I have heard but based on what I have experienced, three years back when I had a very severe accident, my brother first of took me to the general hospital and we arrived there, there was no stretcher or wheel chair available in the whole of the hospital, my brother and the good samaritan that helped him carry me to the hospital had to carry me again to the emergency room so that the doctor could attend me, but getting there no doctor was available on duty, apparently they were on strike at that time, and even before the nurses could attend to me they asked for so many things for my personal use like cotton wool and bandages, my brother had to go and buy.

After the nurses gave an injection to calm the pains, they told us to try another hospital and that they would not be able to attend to me, so we left and went to Navy clinic and the same thing happened, there was no doctor on duty too. At that point we were moving from one to another and I was in mad pains so my uncle decided to drive to a teaching hospital which was quite far, but fortunately a friend called and said that there would not be any need for us to go that because all the public hospitals were on strike but one of the doctors just came into the city so went straight to his clinic.

But honestly Doctors and nurses have gone strike so many times but yet nothing has been done about their complaints, thats why here in my country Nigeria many Doctors and nurses are always looking for ways to own their hospitals or go abroad, in my country many doctors in the general hospitals have their own hospitals and they will always refer patients with critical cases to there own hospitals, and thats where they make real money from.

Doctors and nurses are one special set of people we have in the world, they dedicate their lives to other people day in day out, they’re always working under pressure and after a long hours of work the lack of incentives and support make their work more challenging. Many junior doctors work their ass off with little salaries that do not reflect their efforts.

Or just maybe if the professionals go on a long term strike it might actually force the government to do something serious about their case but however this quite impossible because nobody wants to see lots of people die, surgeries would be unattended to, emergency cases will not be attended to which might turn out really bad. But on the other hand for this to work there must be an accountability and everybody must be involved, the strike must be organized very well, the voices ofnthe people, media, civil society must join in making health care reform a national priority.

photo was Imagined by Meta

THANKS FOR READING💫