By Ali Elias
Following the death of Dr. Vwaere Diaso, a medical staff at Lagos Island General Hospital, the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA) has voiced out the immediate need for healthcare sector reforms to ensure proper working of facilities and to enthrone accountability, and transparency within the system.
This call
came in the wake of the ugly and avoidable tragic incident in a Lift at the Lagos
Island hospital involving Dr. Vwaere Diaso. It has drawn wide outcry and
condemnation across the country. The death of the doctor, after the Lift she
was in crashed from the 10th floor has been attributed to sheer
negligence by the management of the hospital. The Lift has been faulty and for
over two years, several reports on its condition made to the appropriate
authority but no action was taken to repair it. The story today, perhaps, would
have been different if the authorities overseeing the medical facility had even
taken the minimal effort to warn users that the Lift is faulty and further gone
ahead to close it from use. More ironic is that the facility is in a facility
that is supposed to save life. As such, they should have understood the
implication of their inaction. But who cares?
In
retrospect, the call, albeit a clarion one, is a worn out cliché. Is there any
sector in Nigeria that such a call has not been consistently made on? None.
Look at our
roads, how many people die, are maimed or sustain injuries on them as a result
of pothole or outright neglect that could be easily patched by our road
maintenance or other agencies involved?
The Benin-Ore,
and other highway have a high record of such incidences. State roads are not
excluded. Such is also the case with even streets; and one wonders if anyone is
in charge. There have been many cases where roads and streets, projects
generally, have been awarded and paid
for by the government but the works are never done. The money for the project
has been collected and has gone into the collusive pockets of the contractor and the
government officials. Meanwhile, the project would have been signed off in the
government books as executed, delivered and commissioned.
Everyone would
turn a blind eye, and all that the authorities come up with when any incident
happens such as the case of Dr. Vwaere Diaso, are probes, enquiries,
condolences, sympathies which remain at official level and never anywhere near
the heart of the government officials. In our context, one wonders what
leadership is all about.
Do we really
value life; is there any more conscience in the land? Where is the soul of
public service? Has the quest for money and power become the be all and end all
at the expense of service delivery, the very reason we are here for?
One must say
that things stand as it is, and continuing due mainly to the infantile mindless
attitude of the political class who ought to show direction and positive
purposeful leadership. Instead what we have is condonement of all sorts of undesirable
behavior – fraud, negligence of duty, lack of accountability, election rigging,
lack of transparency, ethnic and
religious bigotry, abuse and outright perversion of the judicial system, in
exchange for political patronage and political power.
HEDA is right, in their observation of “the immediate necessity for robust healthcare reforms to strengthen infrastructure, accountability, and transparency within our healthcare system”. However, all sectors of the Nigerian economic and social life need reform; not just the health sector. A part of a corporate cannot be reformed and expected to perform any better while the other cooperating parts of the system are dysfunctional.