Healthcare Nigeria: Lack of Coverage
According to the founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, only 3% of Nigerians have adequate healthcare coverage. When people suffering from infectious diseases can’t get help, they stay sick for longer periods of time and infect the people they come into contact with. As a result of low coverage, doctors easily get overwhelmed by outbreaks and often come down with deadly illnesses themselves.
Healthcare Nigeria: Ebola outbreaks
In 2014, 120 healthcare workers in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone died from Ebola. Equipment shortages, low funding, staff shortages and exhaustion were some of the factors that allowed Ebola to affect doctors and nurses. Unless Nigeria allocates more money to its healthcare programs, the country will continue to be haunted by the threat of outbreak.
Healthcare Nigeria: Low pay and widespread corruption
According to a story from The Africa Report, health care workers often exploit sick people and demand money from them before allowing them to get treatment. In 2013 a corrupt nurse demanded money from the husband of a pregnant woman to pay for a blood transfusion. The husband– a man by the name of Benson Okomika– tried to argue that the transfusion should have been covered, but the nurse would not back down. The husband borrowed some cash from a friend, but by the time he made it back to the hospital his wife was dead. Part of the reason why healthcare workers resort to extortion is that their salaries are very low. Corruption will continue to be a problem so long as doctors and nurses are overworked and underpaid.
Healthcare Nigeria: Ignorance among hospital staff
Many nurses in Nigeria are ignorant about basic medical facts. In rural areas, ignorance runs rampant concerning patients with HIV or AIDS. One anonymous patient from Delta reported that it is not uncommon for HIV patients to get yelled at just for accidentally touching a nurse.
Healthcare Nigeria: Fake drugs
In Nigeria, lack of funding has led to some hospitals selling fake drugs to patients. As a result, many Nigerians have died from diseases that could have been treated if they were given real medication. Often there is no way to tell if a drug is authentic or not until it is too late. Until the peddlers of fake drugs are brought to justice, there is little that can be done.
Healthcare Nigeria: Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
During the dramatic ebola outbreak of 2014, heroic Nigerian doctors and healthcare professionals stepped up to the plate to combat the deadly disease. Some particularly heroic doctors and nurses put their own lives at risk just because they saw someone who needed help. If the good people working in the Nigerian healthcare system receive an adequate amount of help and support from the government, the healthcare situation in Nigeria will improve.
Comment…my comment is that the Nigeria government is not trying concerning the area of Health care system management especially in the rural communities because there are many people who have been suffering from the health care system because of lack of Health personnel working in the health centers. Let me say this, there are a lot health professionals who have graduated 🎓since but there is no employment especially the primary health care workers who suppose to work in the rural communities health center to help the people with their health challenges. At this Juncture, I’m pleading with the Nigeria government to at least create job opportunities for the immediate graduate who have graduated from the college of Health Technology cross the Nation to work in various communities in order to tackle their health problems, because this set of people are trained for that purpose. This is another way to improve our Nigeria health care system in the rural areas, I’m part of that team (primary health care).
By God’s Grace, I’ll restructure the system of medicine in Nigeria. God Bless Nigeria!
I expected the illustrations to be on doctors not on nurses.