Adewole’s wrong prescription

As far as gaffes go, Isaac Folorunso Adewole’s own must rank very high among the Buhari administration officials. And there are quite many of them, but our dear minister of health’s own is condescension taken too far. A rather innocuous question, which demands a serious answer, turned a professor of gynaecology and obstetrics to a comedian.

A bright and perceptive young journalist had taken Adewole up at an event last weekend about young medical graduates who are increasingly finding it difficult to secure places for residency training, a prerequisite for ascending the medical profession ladder in our country. Unless it has changed recently, they cannot even proceed to the mandatory national youth service without this residency training. In the last two years, some parents have had to solicit my intervention to get places for such training, which are only available in tertiary health centres. By the way, a big commendation to the reporter who asked the question, you have made not only yourself and your medium proud, all of us who love journalism should be delighted in your action too.

But that cannot be said for Adewole’s response. The man popularly called IFA after his initials by folks in the University of Ibadan where he served as the college of medicine provost and the 11th vice chancellor before his appointment as health minister, threw away a golden opportunity to explain what the administration is doing to remedy the situation. Medical training don’t come cheap these days, tuition fees range from N2.5 to N5 million in private universities per session and multiply this by six years, one will have a fair idea of how much it costs. More and more parents are turning to such schools because of limited spaces in public universities and the fact that one is unsure of when he will graduate. Factor in textbooks and other ancillary costs, you have an idea of what parents and guardians go through to produce a medical doctor.

Adewole’s answer was that it is not a big deal if young doctors don’t have residency training as not all of them can be specialists while those who don’t’ have the opportunity can be farmers and tailors as the person who sews his gown is a medical doctor. No, it was not a comedy skit but the answer of a professor of medicine who has been involved in medical training since 1989. “It might sound selfish, but we can’t all be specialists. We can’t. Some will be farmers, some will be politicians.”The man who sews my gown is a doctor. He makes the best gown. And some will be specialists, some will be GPs, some will be farmers.” Those were his exact words.

With over 200 scholarly articles in medical journals, they don’t come sound more than Adewole, but a foot-in-the-mouth moment offers us a window into what he thinks of young Nigerians who aspire to follow in his steps. I can only imagine what my tailor whose daughter hopes to study medicine one day – and she is a brilliant girl – will think of such a person if he hears that Adewole’s prescription is for his daughter to become a farmer after studying medicine. As at today, Nigeria has only one surgical specialist per 100,000 people; one of the lowest rate in the world, and our health minister is not bothered about how to improve on such but instead on how we can turn doctors to farmers. Make no mistake, there is nothing wrong with farming and it is a wonderful occupation as we all need food to survive, but how does one go through medical training and end up a farmer? Last year I lamented, in this column, how our doctors are disappearing https://www.thecable.ng/our-doctors-are-disappearing and sadly, the situation has gone worse. We keep losing more doctors to Europe, particularly the United Kingdom and United States. A quick survey will reveal that apart from senior doctors most young and middle level ones are interested in seeking greener pasture outside our shores. Yet, Adewole who ought to be at the forefront of encouraging young doctors to stay and help in raising our health indices is not bothered.

The minister’s solecism further reveals how public officials treat media professionals working with them: has the minister received training on how to handle media enquiries? Where were his media handlers when he blundered his way through the journalist’s question? At another level, maybe this is actually what Adewole thinks of the citizens he is meant to serve and so why are we bothered? For someone whose sack of a subordinate was reversed and did not quit in protest, perhaps one expects too much from him by thinking he will treat others with respect and the courtesy they deserve. After all, self-respect is the best form of respect.