Professor Adewole Should Respond to SERAP’s Challenge
A recent report released by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, (SERAP), detailing the sordid state of federal tertiary health institutions across the country should not surprise Nigerians. Public health facilities across our nation have been in tatters for years without any hope in sight.
The truth is that they have degenerated in the last three years. Just as SERAP noted, “Healthcare services in the country remain extremely poor. Nigeria is rated 187th out of 191 countries in terms of health care delivery. One-third of more than 700 health facilities in the country have been destroyed because of many years of corruption, mismanagement and neglect, and about 3.7 million people are in need of healthcare assistance.
“Despite huge budgetary allocations, many of the teaching hospitals and medical centres under the direct control of your Ministry have been left to fall apart and health care facilities in many of these hospitals lack even the most basic of amenities. Ordinary Nigerians have derived appallingly little benefit from all of the allocations, in terms of access to basic healthcare, showing a failure to respect and ensure the right to health and human dignity in the country.”
The challenge thrown at the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, to render account of the spending by these federal health institutions is thus timely. Nigerians want to know why these institutions have become death centres and what they have been doing with their annual allocations. It is a shame that Nigeria has the third highest infant mortality rate in the world.
In the Freedom of Information request to the Minister, SERAP urged him to urgently provide information about details of actual spending of allocations to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, (LUTH) and the other 20 federal teaching hospitals and 20 federal medical centres across the country, for the period covering 2010 to 2017.
The organisation said the information should include details of spending on specific projects and facilities.
I hope that Adewole will comply with the request. This minister hasto provide strong leadership in the efforts to provide basic healthcare to Nigerians. Federal health institutions have been left to crumble and wither away and Nigerians have suffered greatly from the decay of these vital public services.
The latest SERAP report is titled: Failing Healthcare: How Federal Hospitals are letting Down the Poor and Making Healthcare a Privilege rather than a Right.
It reported that at LUTH, even bed sheets were in short supply. “Patients use their wrapper for bed sheets sometimes. And when they use LUTH bed sheets, they are usually old and torn most of the time. Toilets in LUTH are centres of disease distribution. You can be sure to get urinary tract infections.”
The report revealed humanitarian crisis, manifestations of corruption and mismanagement at LUTH and how unhygienic conditions, severe shortages of medicines and medical supplies in the hospital and two other Federal Government owned hospitals in Lagos make it extremely difficult for many Nigerians to obtain essential medical care.”
It is no longer news that President Buhari garnered 14,842,072 votes from party members in 36 and the FCT during the presidential primary election to win the APC ticket. However, the startling figures from across the states remain a source of worry for true lovers of free, credible and fair election.
This is the same Buhari that scored 15,424,921 votes to win the 2015 general election. Now, party members alone gave him close to 15 million votes. Members in Kano State gave him 2,931,235 during the Presidential primary. This is the same Kano that gave him about 2.1 million votes in the 2015 general election. Members in Lagos gave him 2,217,722 votes. This is the same Lagos State that gave him less than a million votes in the 2015 general election.
The figures conjured from the Presidential primary are worrying. For me, it looks like a prelude to the falsification of figures in the 2019 elections by the APC. I am worried and all lovers of democracy must remain on the alert.