African leaders medical jamboree

BY OLUSANYA ANJORIN

In a continent where leaders flew thousands of miles to get medical treatment, from Benin to Nigeria, Angola to Zimbabwe, Gabon to Egypt, it is a cyclical pattern for leaders to leave crumbling health institutions in their own countries and to fly abroad to get the best of services while the ordinary citizens are left in the lurch; access to what is considered good is as scarce as fowl teeth.

In truth, a leader should make informed choices about his health, this help him to reduce the risks if things go wrong. But really, why do leader travel abroad? Some engage in medical tourists abroad to save money while others go for experimental or alternative treatments unavailable in the local country. Who is against medical tourism? ‘Remember things don’t always go as planned. For a sick president who suffers serious complications not to seek medical abroad? You guys are joking!’ Frankly, the opinion of most people is that the decision makers should make their home country okay so that there will not be need to travel abroad for medical treatment.

The question remains, what are the things obtainable abroad that are not available locally?

Affordability, Reliability and Trust, these are the key things that are scarce here as in seeing Lucifer in heaven. In the midst of it all, the popular acronym ‘NEPA’ is very popular in Nigeria which is termed ‘’Never Expect Power Always,’’ but in the age of intelligence, can we still trust the system?
Most of our clinic even if well funded can scarcely get ordinary paracetamol tablets. Incredible, so to say. It was in 2017 when Zahra Buhari took to her Instagram page to criticize the Permanent Secretary of the State House, Jalal Arabi, for his inability to provide even Paracetamol tablets to the clinic despite a budget of N3 billion for the provision of drugs to the hospital. That was a case of the dilapidated situation of hospitals not only in Nigeria but in other African countries. The irony of things is that our leaders expect the masses to trust the local hospitals.

In most African countries, people preferred private hospitals. Why? Because the private hospitals tend to be rated higher in terms of facilities and technologies offered; they are also more expensive because government hospitals charge a lesser fee. However, the masses generally prefer General hospital because some of the country’s best doctors serve in the public sector and are cheaper.

In the first tenure of our President, he hopped out on local hospitals like a frog in search of food in London.

Formerly Zimbabwe President, Robert Mugabe skipped out on Zimbabwean’s hospitals like a calf to Singapore for health checks.

In Angola, after a protracted absence, the government confirmed that longtime leader Jose Eduardo Dos Santos was away for one of his regular health checks. Again, Angola despite huge fund coming from oil, it has failed to improve health infrastructure.

Sometime ago, Republic of Benin President, Patrice Talon admitted to having two surgeries during a visit to Paris.

In 2018, South Africa Deputy President David Mabuza went to Russia for a routine check-up. He reiterated that he has his medical records in Russia, in his words, ‘’it’s always good to go to people that have treated you… I will still go there because they have my medical records and I know at what time I must go for a medical checkup.’’ Musa said at the 2018 election campaign in Piet Retief in Mpumalanga.
Not too long ago, Reuters reported that the President of Gabon, Ali Ondimba was admitted to a Saudi Arabian Hospital after suffering a stroke while attending an economic forum in that country.

The list is endless, I dream of a time where government will provide health insurance coverage and ensure affordable, acceptable, available and accessible healthcare services for all citizens of Africans, no matter where they live. I dream of a period where a system would be designed to help pay for the care of the sick, and for those who can afford medical care to subsidize those who can’t.

The chief reason why health facility remains in dilapidated condition in most African hospitals are because of insufficient resources, skills migration and little investment in health sector by local authority.
Like a horse pawing the ground in eagerness of race, we must begin to focus on building a better healthcare infrastructure in Africa. A situation where Africa bears one-quarter of the world disease and yet has only 2% of the global’ doctors is totally unacceptable. The journey of a thousand mile begin with a step, we must start to make our health sector work.

Anjorin contributes this piece from Lagos.
He is an inspirational speaker, columnist and entrepreneur and can be reached at
[email protected], +234 8032826650