A Lagos-based media executive, Seth Akintoye, has shared his experience as a seasoned health journalist and someone with a kidney challenge.
Here is his instructive perspective on the crisis in which former Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has found himself, in his attempt to save his daughter, Sonia:
Kidney diseases and failures are one illness that I will not imagine my enemy to have. It will drain all your resources and at the end the patient will still die! At The Guardian on Sunday, I did a story on the epidemic of kidney failures in Nigeria over 20 years ago. It was a front page story, in fact, a second lead! But did anybody listen? Not even those in government!
In a country of over 200 million people, only one hospital, Saint Nicholas Hospital, Lagos, is doing a serious work in kidney transplant. Many other hospitals do not have capacity for transplant on a regular basis. It is part of the failure of government. I wish Ekweremadu’s daughter will overcome this problem. Even as has rightly been said, after the rigour of getting a compatible donor, there is nothing to guarantee that the recipient’s body will not reject the organ, which the body will see as alien! Some years ago also at The Guardian on Sunday, I reported efforts by scientists to grow genetically modified pigs whose kidneys could be harvested for humans. And the first demonstration of that took place recently, I think in the US, but the patient’s body rejected it, and it became a failure!
Those in government in Nigeria have refused to develop our hospitals; neither are they interested in funding medical research. The result is what we are seeing now: collective failure and collective suffering for both the rich and the poor!
I attend two clinics at LASUTH for my kidney and prostrate gland challenges!
You will wonder the number of poor patients that attend these clinics on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the few doctors available. You could spend a whole day before seeing a doctor!
And if you know the number of patients in the queue waiting for surgery and the few number of surgeons the hospital has, you will weep for Nigeria! Is equipping our hospitals and providing good conditions of service for doctors to work, rocket science? How did the other countries our rich men run to able to develop their hospitals?
Ekweremadu’s case is a tip of the iceberg! There will be more Ekweremadus as long as we continue to pay lip service to health care in Nigeria!
