Tag: healers

•Bedside hostility, forced circumcision and criminal extortion at General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos

Few Lagos tragedies fully measure to the grotesque proceedings at the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos. Even as you read, the travesty of healthcare and humaneness persists like the tragic nuance in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The tragedy at the hospital is hardly the finale to the morbid serials staged across the coastal city’s General Hospitals but it unarguably represents an obscene, poignant burlesque characteristic of the incumbent administration’s health policy.

Is the state’s Commissioner for Health, Jide Idris, aware of the organised fraud being perpetrated at the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, among other state hospitals? Is he aware of the bestial treatment meted to pregnant women and other patients calling in at the public health centre? Does he know of the subtle and brazen extortion methods perpetrated by the clinic’s authorities, like ‘over-prescription’ of drugs and medical provisions? Too many husbands are often forced to purchase more than the drugs and medical provisions they need for their pregnant wives’ treatment at the hospital’s dispensary. At the end of their ordeal, clinic staff persuade husbands of newly delivered mothers and relatives of convalescing patients who are about to be discharged, to give up the excess drugs and supplies. Then they sell to new patients at prices too close or similar to the dispensary’s.

Is Jide Idris aware of ‘Megalek,’ an agency within the state’s General Hospital, forcefully recommended by the hospital authorities to perform circumcision on newborn sons, against their mother’s wishes. For the unsolicited service, mothers are forced to pay N4, 000. And no mother’s heartfelt complaint to the hospital’s Medical Director could protect her from the insolent tentacles of the internal extortion ring.

Does Jide Idris know that, after reading the first part of this article, the Medical Director, General Hospital, Oke Odo, summoned an emergency meeting whereby the fraudulent charges on circumcision and other deceptive fees were promptly cancelled – at least till the noise blows over?

The Lagos health commissioner is probably aware that there aren’t enough beds for pregnant women and other patients in the hospital’s crowded wards. And he probably knows of the several travesties being perpetrated in the hospital’s wards, he is simply too busy to care. Perhaps because the victims are far removed from the elite segment of Lagos’ high society.

In fairness to the personnel of General Hospital, Oke Odo, Agege, they, like their colleagues across the state’s General Hospitals, have to function in parlous conditions. They are forced to ration fuel for electricity power generators because the state refuses to provide adequate budget for electricity supply. The hospital, like all others, is understaffed, and plagued by boorish staff with atrocious bedside manners. The medical staff  and auxiliary teams are overrun by a flippant, disgruntled, desperate breed. Save a very few whose respect for life and human dignity is borne of good breeding from childhood, self taught or acquired under the tutelage of Nigeria’s vanishing league of true health practitioners – zealots of a golden medical era –  the General Hospital, Oke Odo and so many others would become too hellish for comfort.

Notwithstanding, a visit to the medical facility is like a journey to hell. Besides the inadequate medical facilities, staff shortages and its tiny car park, a dark pall of fear and uncertainty settles on patients and their relatives every time they call in at the hospital. Ask Citizen Afolake who had to wait 24 hours, in painful labour, on a wooden chair, to get a bed space that she lost as soon as she was wheeled into the hospital’s labour room. Ask Citizen Mo who was almost killed by the hospital’s medical staff because her vitals were taken by hospital cleaners posing as nurses while she attended antenatal clinic. Ask those who have lost loved ones to the hospital’s dysfunctional system but whose miseries are too inconsequential for the state to care about.

Governor Akinwumi Ambode has definitely got his work cut out for him. He should know that budgeting N46.9 billion to the health sector in the state’s 2016 budget is never enough to emphasise his commitment to the alleviation of the citizenry’s health problems and elevation of the state’s cancerous health system.

“The Y2016 budget of N662.588bn will enable our government focus on the present challenges of security, traffic gridlock resolution including physical and social infrastructural developments which have thrown up new challenges quite different from our past experience,” said Ambode while presenting the budget at a brief but impressive ceremony at banquet hall of the Lagos House.

He called it his administration’s article of faith with Lagosians and promised that the budget would be faithfully implemented in line with his determination to make Lagos work for all, irrespective of age, gender, tribe or status.

It is about time Ambode made Lagos truly work for Lagosians. It is about time he heeded the birth and death cries of mothers and underprivileged Lagosians respectively, who are persistently subjected to the serrated blades of the coastal city’s dysfunctional anti-citizenry health system.

Of course, overzealous aides and cronies would readily tell Governor Ambode to dismiss this piece as yet another rant by a journalist seeking to make a noise like thunder over the city’s calm waters, but the Lagos governor would be doing himself a lot of good by paying good mind to the issues raised by the first and second installment of this piece.

The Lagos health sector is comatose and in great deal of financial and administrative aid. Governor Ambode should rededicate himself to the sanitation of the state’s health facilities. Given that a greater segment of the state’s citizenry fall within the bracket too poor and unable to patronise the overpriced health services of the state’s boutique specialist hospitals, Governor Ambode should endeavour to take more active interest in the state’s health sector.

Currently, tragedy plays a desperate game across the state’s public health centres – a game invented by the government’s administrative clumsiness thus blunting the incumbent governor’s overhyped competence and devotion to the state’s vulnerable divide.

The battle for the soul of the state’s floundering health system can only be won by a governor who is ready to march in virtual lockstep to his claims of competence and empathy without airs. Nigeria is currently afflicted by the scourge of turncoat governors and other public officers who have betrayed the trust and exhausted the hopes of the electorate whose goodwill and votes earned them their cozy seats and mansions across the country’s political landscape.

It would be really nice and refreshing to see Governor Ambode truly rise up as a man and defender of the rights of the poor, helpless folk whose votes, goodwill and passion for real ‘Change’ got him into power.

Let him not act like his peer who got too drunk and blinded by power soon after their ascent the seat of power. Too many of Ambode’s peers skew stewardship by their disruptive relation with power and the citizenry’s trust. These are the tragic freaks and hostages to power. They are less moral and humane than the quintessential statesman. Their will to power is naked. Their actions are mired in chthonian cloud. They are a conduit of the irrational, exposing governance to mutations of the barbarism that the All Progressives Congress (APC) swore to shut out at its birth.

Let the case of the General Hospital, Oke Odo, Agege and other state public health centres become Governor Ambode’s vehicle for testing and purifying his mettle and much hyped competence, before it renders his government yet another tragedy that Nigeria is trying to correct.

•Bedside hostility, forced circumcision and criminal extortion at General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos

The depravity of its ‘excellent’ nature is coastal Lagos’ dirty secret. Despite its haughty  claim as Nigeria’s “Centre of Excellence,” Lagos groans under the tedious weight of mediocrity and its tragic sense of life. There is no gainsaying the commercial hub of Nigeria profits by a hard-worn, romanticised imagery of brilliance, bracing industry and entertainment. At the backdrop of this fantasy and specious proceedings however, Lagos pulsates in hazardous ugliness.

This ugliness resonates across the coastal city’s landscape; it subsists in its neglected bad roads, cratered by-passes, hostile state agencies, infinitely devious and overzealous staff. It seeps through the mediocrity and crass inhumaneness of establishments like the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos.

At the hospital, bestiality dons a joyful sneer and saunters through its hostile wards and administrative offices, every day. The General Hospital, Oke Odo, sets itself up against the true nature and essence of the Hippocratic Oath, by descending into infamy and organised extortion. Medical and administrative staff of the hospital seem driven by bile and institutionalised aggression. Thus every patient suffers a cruel and unusual form of punishment simply by calling in sick, appearing for consultation or birthing a newborn within the cold ambience of the public health centre.

As you read, Citizen Afolake, a teacher, is still traumatised following her nasty experience in  the hands of the hospital’s insouciant staff. On her first day in the hospital, Afolake suffered a gruesome birthing process; she was made to labour in extremity. She experienced no reprieve from pain. No medical staff came around to offer kind words to her and fellow pregnant women even as they were forced to sit through the night on a hard wooden chair while they queued for ‘bed space.’

When the pain became unbearable at midnight, Afolake, like her peers, had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. She could not leave the hospital because it was dark and she could not stand from her seat lest she loses it to another pregnant woman craving a seat while waiting for the ever elusive ‘bed space.’

Impatiently but with calm resolve, Afolake braved through the night, praying that a ‘bed space’ became available to her by daybreak. But none would be available to her at dawn. Thus she writhed in agony from 9 am on Monday, October 10, 2016 to 9 pm on Tuesday, October 11, 2016 when she eventually found ‘bed space.’ It is instructive to note that Afolake, like her pregnant mates, waited on the hard wooden chair for 24 hours.

After she put to bed, she had to wait on a long queue to bath herself and her baby. She also had to put up with very hostile nurses and flippant cleaners. Thus after delivery, Afolake could hardly wait to escape the hospital’s human and structural extremities. But Afolake would experience more misery by the hospital’s staff as they insisted that she let ‘Megalek,’ an agency within the hospital, perform circumcision on her newborn son, against her wish. For the unsolicited service, they forced her to pay N4, 000.

Predictably, Afolake protested; “I told them I didn’t need them to circumcise my son. I told them we have a family doctor who does the circumcision on male children in my family but they ignored my explanation,” she lamented.

Thus Afolake sought the hospital’s Medical Director (MD) and complained to her but to her chagrin, the MD said she (Afolake) must pay the N4, 000 even though she did not want the circumcision done on her son. “I had already paid N29, 200 as medical bill but she said I must pay an additional N4, 000 for an unsolicited circumcision which I declined,” said Afolake.

The hospital staff made her understand that, if she failed to pay the N4,000, she would not be discharged. But Afolake was too eager to leave the hospital. Before she put to bed, she had been sleeping on a chair and immediately after delivery, she was forced to share a narrow bed with a heavily pregnant woman because she lost her ‘bed space’ immediately she was wheeled into the labour room.

Eventually, Afolake paid N4, 000 for a circumcision that was never performed on her son. A separate receipt was issued for the unsolicited service while another was issued for her medical bill. Both receipts bore the logo and name of the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos.

With a heavy heart, Afolake left the hospital ruing the complex yet methodical network of extortion foisted on her by the hospital. She lamented the hell she went through birthing her son at the public health centre and wondered how the hospital’s medical and administrative staff mutated into such pitiless characters.

No doubt, Afolake is luckier than Citizen Mo. In 2011, the latter almost lost her life even after losing her child due to the negligence of the medical staff at the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos. Citizen Mo, a journalist, was rushed to the clinic after her blood sugar level hit the roof. She had been attending antenatal clinic at the hospital but all along, the hospital assigned cleaners to attend to her and her pregnant peer. Unknown to her, the menial workers who had been taking her medical records, had virtually no knowledge and training about how to run an antenatal clinic, yet they attended to her and other pregnant women. Eventually, they committed serious blunder recording wrong details of Citizen Mo’s health vitals. Consequently, she didn’t get the treatment that she actually deserved.

Citizen Mo was rushed to the hospital when her blood sugar level skyrocketed with devastating impact on her health. She was seven months pregnant. At the hospital, the doctors did not discover that she was having contractions until dusk. Even so, there was little they could do; they wheeled her into the theatre and delivered her of her child prematurely. Subsequently, discrepancies caused by wrong administration of drugs and medical aid caused Citizen Mo to slip into coma. She was in coma for two days because the doctors treated her based on wrong vitals (medical information) taken of her, by the hospital’s cleaners and other menial workers. Sadly, Citizen Mo stirred from coma to a tragic reality: her child died because there was no functional incubator in the hospital’s labour room. There was no incubator at the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege, Lagos.

More severe cases abound of unpardonable acts committed by the hospital’s medical staff. But the fault is never entirely the fault of the hospital’s medical personnel. Like several other health facilities across Lagos, they are forced to function with a lean team and mean resources. Thus the hospital’s ‘bed spaces’ are never enough among other inadequacies.

But that is no excuse for the hospital staff to mortgage patients’ health and risk their lives on a whim. For a state allegedly presided over by a ‘no-nonsense’ governor, the state of the General Hospital, Oke-Odo, Agege is an eyesore. Governor Akinwumi Ambode projects himself as a revolutionary in the saddle. His media team works assiduously to establish him as a grassroots politician and statesman with a heart that skips for the interest of Lagos’ poor, vulnerable divide. Yeah, he is rehabilitating bad roads and building new ones but does he have the courage, and administrative will to save lives?