It started like every joke that turns sour by the time the punch line kicks in. Medical services were gradually going down the drain and everyone was looking the other way.
Those who could afford medical services chose to do so at home or abroad and in quick time.At the height of road accidents, armed robberies and conflicts and the resultant injuries to victims thereof, it was important that emergency medical services were available to the people.
Matters got worse and out of hand when injured victims were not given emergency treatment at hospitals and clinics as they arrived.
Many lives could have been saved if these services were provided.
The reasons for the refusal of clinics and hospitals to provide emergency, life-saving treatment was the insistence of a Police Report before the victims could be admitted.
A Police Report assured the medical operatives that the victim was not a participant in crime and to absolve the operatives of any responsibility of actions assumed by the authorities to amount to collusion and abetting crime.
On the one hand, the Police had numerous cases where criminals were rushed to places of medical assistance and from there made a rapid recovery and escape, making it more difficult to track them or find them.
The authorities declared it the responsibility of medical operatives not to provide emergency services at the beck and call of criminals.
The difficulty, which arose for the medical operatives, was the ability or capacity to determine in an emergency which victims were actually criminals.
There is no National Identification system which enables people carry evidence of them being criminals or non-criminals. It would have been easier for the operatives if a victim’s ID told them immediately that he/she was a criminal.
To make matters worse, an operative could not be assured that the victim rushed into their premises acquired their injuries from unfortunate accidents rather than while making their escape from the scene of a crime.
Victims of unfortunate accidents or social conflicts were inadvertently lumped together and all required to produce a Police Report before they could be attended to.
Society itself was forced to stand aside from offering help and assistance to victims. There are numerous reports of being accused of aiding and abetting crime if you could not provide evidence that the victim you assisted by rushing them to clinics and hospitals were not criminals.
Then came assassinations and targeted victims. This increased the number of ways people became victims needing emergency treatment.
While the wave of armed robberies, societal conflicts and target shooting s have since decreased through other efforts by the authorities, there is still the practice of demanding a Police report before emergency treatment is provided.
Medical operatives in Nigeria compound these issues with the strenuous demand for large monetary deposits before treatment can be provided.
The ethos of the medical profession and the Hippocrates’ Creed as pledged to by qualified practitioners the world over, seem to have been forgotten somewhere during all of this.
In the wonderful USA, which we tend to cite as an example of progress and development, there are requirements of valid medical insurance, private or government schemes, before treatment is provided.
However, Emergency Rooms in the USA are not compelled to demand such before attending to victims. We all watch pirated copies of ER and admire the staged rapid responses to emergency medical requirements of American citizens.
In the absence of an effective National Medical Insurance Scheme in Nigeria and with the continued persistence of medical operatives on the production of a Police Report before the provision of emergency services, there are unfortunate deaths that could have been avoided.
It should be a criminal offence in itself, if Nigerians cannot get emergency treatment at medical facilities without the production of a Police Report on the incident from which the injures arose.
There should be the fear of losing their operating licences if the medical operatives refuse to provide necessary and life-saving treatment to Nigerians.
An editor of a national daily newspaper was died recently. As yet unidentified persons stormed his premises and shot him several times. An occupational hazard of working as a media professional anywhere in the world.
Rushed to a nearby clinic while still showing signs of life, he was refused emergency treatment at the first clinic and did not make it to the next. He died on the way there.
It is not enough for leadership to troop to the microphones when incidents like these occur. These should not present opportunities for grandstanding and screaming ‘We must find the killers!’.
Indeed there are security issues to address, however, it is pertinent to note that not much is being said about what amounts to the malpractices of the medical operatives, in not providing emergency treatment to victims.
There are many more victims that are not as high-profile as the ones that bring us out in flowing robes and charming smiles. There are ordinary Nigerians who die everyday from non-criminal activity due to a lack of provision of emergency medical attention.
The value placed on the lives of Nigerians is not high enough in these cases?
Treat a Nigerian, Save a Nigerian and do not let him or her suffer the indignity of being turned back from receiving emergency medical attention when it is most critical, in his or her own country.
Our governments, both state and federal, must outlaw these practices and our justice system must provide avenues for recompense to families of victims.
Nigeria is not a failed state and neither can the world or her people afford her to be.
What do you think?
