Lasun Alagbe
Early morning. The Igando area of Lagos. A terrible accident involving a bus and a truck. Among other casualties, so hit was the man that he suffered internal bleeding.
Then the drama of double tragedy, if not multiple, began. Initially, he could be said to be potentially lucky because good Samaritans were able to reach his family early enough. They rushed to the area, and began to take urgent steps to save the life of their father, protector and breadwinner.
First, the man, Mr Adeoye Ogundiran, who was a father to a younger friend of this writer, was taken to a private hospital which, however, referred him to a higher facility in the realm of a General or Teaching Hospital, because it lacked the capacity to handle internal bleeding. And that was like the real beginning of the journey of no return.
He was taken to the General Hospital nearest to the scene in Igando, the management said there was no space for him. They took the man to the General Hospital in Ile Epo, yet they were confronted with the news that there was no space. The same thing applied at the LASUTH, Ikeja, while a pre-visit call to LUTH yielded the same sour message: no space.
That same day, Ogundiran died. It was not a question of lack of fund. It was also not a case of complications or late arrival at a hospital. It was just that of non-availability of space that made the Lagosian bled to death.
This could never have been the fault of the new commissioner, Prof. Akin Abayomi, nor is it that of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who only recently just resumed mounted the saddle. The argument is also not to say the fault is that of the predecessor, though he must share in the burden of accumulated neglect. How it, however, concerns them is the need for them to appreciate the true sorry picture of access to treatment in the state they are governing. The reason is that whatever happened to our man has happened to many other Lagosians and is happening right now. An immediate example is that of the seasoned journalist and ‘Premium Times’/’The Nation’ columnist, Dele Agekameh, in whose recent death the ill-prepared health system in the country is complicit.
In most public hospitals, which boast the best qualified hands, and which charge less, there is no space is the daily song on the lips of officials. Even where a patient manages to get into any of the facilities, he or she has to so wait in clumsy, long queues that it takes the generosity of death for them to be alive by the time it is their turn.
Abayomi and his boss must thus realise that they are administering health over people who will not get space in their hospitals the day they need this mostly. By realising this, they should, without delay, embark on the expansion and upgrading of facilities because it is a crime and a curse to deny the sick of a space for treatment.
The new commissioner of Health in Lagos State must urgently undertake an assessment of the work he needs to do but there is particularly the urgent need to expand and build new facilities. There are several sore areas in the health care sector, including the unethical disposition of many doctors and nurses, circulation of fake drugs and blood racketing. But creating access for patient seems to be the most urgent.
Of course, whatever the situation is in Lagos is more or less the same elsewhere in the country. After all, a First Lady, not long ago, lamented that even the Aso Rock clinic is like an empty shell.
