On New Year’s Day, I paid a visit to the hospital to show empathy to those not privileged to say happy new year to their fellow humans. Even if they said it, they did so without the cheer of an optimist but out of a ritual necessity.
They were not at the place of vanity where beer frothed and the glutton had his feast. They did not enjoy the spiritual luxury of grand services ushering in a new year.
I decided to visit the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), and see the fragile clinging to life. LASUTH is growing into the hospital of choice of many, not only in Lagos, but across the country.
For a government-run institution, we see the preponderance of facilities and eager zeal of doctors and nurses as far as we can see it in our society where competence and zest for work are replaced with the fervency of self-interest and casual attention to duty.
I visited the pediatric complex. After the wary staff allowed me in, I was able to meet three patients with whom I could show some attention.
The nurses identified a few others, but picked Marvelous, Mubarak and Idris.
The first sense that assailed me at the sight of the three was helplessness. They were in the hospital but had no choice. A few days earlier, Governor Idris Wada of Kogi State had just declared, in a pose of boastful vanity, that he did not want treatment abroad. He was involved in an accident.
The three I saw were even privileged to be in that hospital because the Lagos State Government had put in place a system where they did not pay for surgery, or bed or some of the services rendered free by LASUTH. In other places abroad, they could have paid the equivalent of millions of Naira.
Yet they would have wanted better services, and they could have flown abroad if they had the resources at Governor Wada’s disposal, or Governor Chime’s or Suntai’s.
Marvelous had a network of plasters that robbed her pretty face of its cherubic charm. She had been born over a month, and the parents had found it difficult to string together hours of sleep. Her problem was a little similar to that of Idris in that they were born without anuses and the doctors had to construct apertures to let out their body wastes.
Idris had had two surgeries, and the parents were hopeful. The nurses, who spoke with intimate knowledge of their situations, also expressed pathos as she narrated little Marvelous’ troubles. A tube was passing blood away from her face. What was that? It had just occurred signifying that the second surgery also was a dud. The staff said it was not fresh blood, but until the doctors came the following day, no one would say the source of the crimson flow.
But father and mother had given up, and they complained of money. The father, a fellow who could mask his despair more than mother who was a bundle of doldrums, said they wanted to go home. To what? They didn’t know. Father was worried that mother had lost all hope, and did not want to lose mother. Mother, moved to tears, choked whenever she wanted to utter any words. Meanwhile, the eyes of Marvelous seemed sharp, almost pleading. The nurse expressed more hope than father and mother.
In Idris’ case, he was much older, about seven years, with a look of indifference to the world around him. But he had deceptive energy.
Father and mother were also beside them but they could not utter any words as the visitor stood beside them. They looked more despondent than the sick. He had surgery but it did not resolve the matter, and he was now sore. He would have to heal before any corrective surgery. How long? No one knows. It could take months. The parents also complained of money, to buy some medication to keep the boy afloat. They complained that it cost them N1,000 a day, and it was too much. Idris did not look as healthy as Marvelous, precarious as the little girl looked. Like Marvelous, the doctors opened apertures for the release of their human wastes.
Mubarak had a different story, but father was not there at the time. Mubarak’s case was desperate, and the mother, who has abandoned a business as a petty trader, gave an expression of one fighting against surrender.
Mubarak is about four years old, and his case is that of abscess. He suffered a hole in the heart and it pumped pus into his brain. An operation was successfully done to rid the head of the pus. Thanks to the LASUTH doctors. But that is not the end of the story. He needs surgery that has to happen abroad, in India. Money. She needs about N2 million to fly the boy abroad and apply treatment. The boy’s limbs are weak and he struggles to eat. A bandage crowns his innocent face and gleaming skin.
As I walked out of the hospital, I had overdosed on concern. It occurred to me that there are a good number of people who splurge on meaningless habits when just a fraction of what they have can help the needy like Marvelous, Idris and Mubarak. But we seem not to care about the affectionate society.
Why can we not have a few of the rich go to hospitals like LASUTH and complement government efforts by adopting a patient? Some can adopt a ward, and others a section, others an ailment, some a particular brand of drugs, and others still can do equipment or sponsor doctors for update training. It would depend on the fatness of their wallets.
It is also true that what in the United States is called MEDICAID is absent here. In the Nordic countries as well as in Canada, the states provide a form of backup for the vulnerable. But the state can only go so much. Those societies have developed elaborate tax systems upon which they draw for the very sick. But I think that a sort of insurance programme is necessary, that will need the contribution of those who work.
I see how many fritter away minutes on recharge cards, almost as an addiction for some frivolous calls. I wonder if we cannot start a scheme in which the ordinary worker donates between N50 and 100 a month, and that is put in a medical trust fund. With this, we can rake in billions of Naira every year, and that will go to upgrading medical infrastructure and helping the Marvelouses and Idrises and Mubaraks of this world.
Maybe Marvelous who reportedly died the night of my visit would still be alive today. Such a programme will enhance the medical welfare already in Lagos with the free services especially for children and the elderly, which is also available in Delta State. Osun State has initiated a programme aimed at the vulnerable, including home care.
The narrative of LASUTH unveils positive government efforts but also the institutional limitation in a society in which self trumps others.
There are many little children seeking help. No one is praying for them like Chime and Suntai. These guys have resources but not health. They have neither health nor resources , but only prayers. Their state is like patients in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel Cancer Ward where, like the Soviet society, the inmates depend only on inner joy to survive. What the patients suffer the society imposes.
The problem is not medical but moral. If everyone joins in, we can heal this society. And as Tolstoy, another Russian novelist, says in War and Peace, “how can one be well… when one suffers morally?”
