Gboyega Alaka highlights the continued devastation of Nigerian’s by cardiac and renal diseases, as they attain epidemic level globally, even as he chronicles the recent Lagos State Cardiac and Renal Centre, as a panacea.
Twice frontline actor, Prince Ifeanyi Dike had to go to India to attend to his ailing kidneys. Twice he also had to undergo kidney transplants because the first transplant failed, and to stay alive, he had to travel the delicate route one more time. For the first time, he also shared his well-kept secret of how felt too embarrassed to call for public help on the second mission; hence he had to go it secretly probably with the help of a few close friends and family. The good news however, was, he survived.
Radio jockey, Steve ‘the sleek’ Kadiri wasn’t that lucky. Like Dike, his first transplant also failed. Like Dike, he too wasn’t able to call for public help until friends, led by Alariwo and co took up his case and launched another appeal. But unlike Dike, Kadiri did not survive. He died before the funding for the second transplant could be fully raised.
President Umaru Yar’adua, with all of the Nigerian state’s machinery and endless cash at his disposal also did not survive. He lost his battle with the highly mortal kidney ailment, despite going to the best hospital in Saudi Arabia. Forget that he embarrassed the Nigerian nation in the process, as many thought the federal government as the sixth largest crude oil producer in the world had no business taking its president to a fellow oil producing state. Not even if it was the world’s number one in the OPEC ranking.
53 year-old Rahila Jiboyewa, an economics teacher at the University of Maiduguri Staff School is currently facing the battle of her life. After an initial mis-diagnosis in Nigeria that focused treatment on her diabetes, doctors in India have confirmed that her problems were indeed caused by her ailing kidneys, which they say have all but packed up.
So she has been busy in the last couple of weeks, raising money through good-spirited Nigerians to go for treatment that includes series of dialysis and a kidney transplant in India. She would need a whopping N8million in the least to pay for the treatments and all the appendages of flight for herself and her companion, feeding and accommodation. She needs so much money because her country ‘does’ not have the capacity to take care of her situation, otherwise, she just have had to raise half of that amount for her treatment. The mis-diagnoses and other nasty experiences she went through in Nigerian hospitals and in the hands of fellow Nigerian health personnel, would not even make her consider a Nigerian option, if there were any. Not even a dialysis session, as she has seen how a Nigerian hospital infected a fellow renal disease patient, during a pre-dialysis operation, complicating her situation in the process.
Of course the cases of actor Muna Obiekwe and radio guru Chaz B are still fresh in our minds.
So much for renal-related diseases.
Just last month, 13-year old Prince Tomiwa Adewale Abegunde returned from the United States of America, where he had gone for a vital hole in the heart operation, sponsored by the America-based Gift of Life Foundation. Today, Adewale lives, to the glory of God and the goodwill of a foreign NGO and a foreign facility. Truth however was that before the NGO came on the scene, Prince Adewale’s parents’ hopes were only hinged on prayers and a miracle, which they probably didn’t believe, deep down, could surface. The whole of their country, Nigeria didn’t have the ability to take care of their boy’s cardiac ailment, and unless they raised about N5million, together with flight and accommodation fee, their lovable son’s fate was probably dicey.
Also, one is not likely to forget too soon, the pathetic story of Adetokunbo and Peace Kalejaye, published in the Nigerian media about a year ago, where their three-year old girl, Desola had been diagnosed with a 12.5mm hole in the heart situation and needed urgent surgery overseas. Even before her birth, the couple had known that difficult times lay ahead, having been forced to bring their daughter to the world prematurely through a caesarean section. Then the doctors had warned that the foetus was not feeding well and was losing too much weight. On delivery, tests showed that she was suffering from hernia, which they said required an operation, that they recommended should be differed till a bit later, when she is older and stronger. The hole in the heart diagnosis, which came seven months after her birth, was therefore a case of double sorrow for both parents.
Aside the trauma they suffered as parents, they still had to contend with the hard task of raising N3.5 million.
A sizable number of Nigerian children suffer from hole in the heart ailments on a regular basis, putting their parents in desperate and panicky situations. That most of these parents are average Nigerians, who can hardly afford three square meals and the regular health treatments, have also meant them coming out cap in hand to seek for public support before accessing the treatment. Inevitably, many die in the process, literally extinguishing their parents dream build around them.
Just last week, Sulaimon Owolabi walked into The Nation’s office in Ladipo, Mushin, desperately crying for help. He wanted a public appeal story done for his three-year old son, Fatai, who has been diagnosed with celebral palsy, and is in the throes of death. Cerebral Palsy by the way is strange situation, where a child is neither able to talk, sit, stand nor even eat properly, but only roll on the bed or floor.
According to Wikipedia, it ‘is caused by an abnormal development or damage to the parts of the brain that control movement, balance and posture.’ Often, the problem occur during pregnancy, during childbirth or shortly after birth, but causes remain largely unknown, leaving doctors to hazard guesses at premature birth and some infections suffered by mothers during pregnancy, as risk factors.
Due to its strangeness, the elder Owolabi took the condition for a spiritual one, taking his son from one spiritual healer to the other until a friend told him it is a health condition and that he should go to a proper hospital.
So now, he needs N4.8million to go to India and access proper definitive treatment.
Pain of a Nation
Even as there does not seems to be any accurate statistics that one can quote, since a good number of Nigerians suffering from the above diseases have died without going to the proper treatment channels, while others still wallow in their predicament, waiting to die in their homes, due to poverty, Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris said in a recent interview that the World Health Organisation’s declaration in 2012 that non-communicable diseases led by cardiovascular and renal diseases have attained epidemic proportion globally, suffices.
Almost on a daily basis, Nigerians wake up to read or watch on TV how their compatriots, even celebrities have to debase themselves to go cap in hand in public, seeking financial help to access treatment for their cardiac, renal or even cancer-related diseases.
Prince Ifeanyi Dike, who incidentally is also chairman board of trustees of the actors Guild of Nigeria recalled how his wife had to jettison shyness and go public after they had virtually ran out of every cash they could squeeze, treating his nagging kidney illness. According to him, for such illnesses, it really does not matter how much money one has, because it is expensive to manage or treat, and at the same time, the victim is no longer able to make more money.
To make matters worse, Nigeria, with all the petro-dollars and resources at her disposal has been unable to institute and develop adequate health facility, causing gravely sick Nigerians to always have to travel to India, Europe or America.
It is instructive to note here that even almighty America with its advanced facilities still loses a great number of its citizens to these ailments.
According to the American Heart Association, cardiovascular diseases, led by Heart diseases and stroke remain the top two killers in the country. A more specific figure claimed that it lost over 787 of its citizens to heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases in 2010; which is about one in every three deaths in America.
In the same vein, the National Kidney Foundation of America, said that with 47,000 American deaths caused by kidney disease in 2013, the disease is the 9th leading cause of death in the country. The body also says one out of every three American adult is at risk of kidney disease and that wait for this, black Americans are 3 times more likely to experience kidney failure. This is probably to say that the black man is more predisposed to the disease. It also kind of tally with the various medical guess that change in lifestyle and diet are major causative factors, since the genealogical composition of people of this race was never designed for the kind of diets and lifestyles they suddenly found themselves living.
Above all, the World Health Organisation’s declaration in its recent report that the burden of diabetes and cardiovascular disease will have increased by 130% in Africa by 2020, calls for great concerns.
Lagos State to the rescue
Wednesday March 18 witnessed the historic commissioning of the Cardiac and Renal Centre in Gbagada, Lagos, by His Excellency, Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN). In his commissioning remarks, the governor said “Year on year, I watched as we exported Nigerians abroad, with family members to care for and support them; all at high cost in foreign exchange, because there was no local alternative.”
Continuing, he said his government between 2008 and 2014, sponsored 42 cardiac cases and 28 renal cases abroad for treatment abroad at tax-payers’ expense on the recommendation of the Ministry of health. And this is in spite of the fact that the country has well over 20,000 experts scattered across the globe and working to serve other societies, while their own people waste away, for lack of adequate facilities.
He had also interacted with some of them and discovered that “they wanted to come home and practice but there were no hospitals comparable to where they were accustomed to working.”
So he took a decision to do something.
The turning point for him however was when a former president of the country had to be flown to Saudi Arabian hospital to manage a kidney ailment.
The commissioning of the facility, six years after it was kicked off in 2008 was therefore a fulfilment of that promise. He therefore congratulated the team that put it together, and indeed the Nigerian people, while inviting them to take advantage of the facility.
According to the governor, the hospital “has 24 dialysis bed stations, 20 beds for recovery and general ward use, 2 high dependency wards with five beds each for patient who have come out of intensive care, five beds for patients in intensive care, four post surgery beds, two post cathlab beds and two surgical theatres built to the most contemporary; along with instant multimedia equipment for live transmission to students in the lecture rooms.
He also declared that the centre is being managed through concession partnership by Renescor Team, a multidimensional consortium of specialised Nigerian and American doctors and nurses who are cardiac and kidney specialists in America.
