ENDLESS TALES OF FOREIGN MEDICAL TRIPS I recall as a primary school pupil one day seeing my father seated on the sofa reading a Newswatch magazine that had the title, Babangida ill, flown to France (not very sure of the title now), i asked him if the President was dead. He chuckled and replied that he was admitted for a certain leg injury. Several years later i was to discover that it was a spinal nerve disorder called Radiculopathy, which sometimes can cause excruciating pains on the extremeities radiating from the spinal cord. The year was 1987 and Babangida spent several weeks in the American Hospital, Paris, France. The ailment was the result of a bullet wound he sustained during the civil war. More than a quarter of a century has passed since then and no suceeding head of state or president has thought it necessary to build, or made it possible to build a world class medical facility where these special ailments may be treated. Indeed the eagerness of Nigerias leaders to whisk themselves or members of their families off to tend to every real or imagined ailment abroad at public expense is nothing short of a national calamity. In 2005 Mrs Stella Obasanjo died in Malaga, Spain after a cosmetic procedure to remove abdominal fat. Late President Yaradua underwent several medical trips to hospitals in Germany and Saudi Arabia to save his ailing heart and liver. More recently, the first lady Dame Patience Jonathan was flown to the Horst Schmidt Klinik, a world class hospital in Germany to have a uterine fibroid removed. The President himself has been known to make some medical trips abroad. On the state level, Governor Rochas Okorocha underwent a trip to a London hospital to nurse a head wound sustained in a mild auto accident! The truth remains that these foreign medical trips are on the increase because our leaders care less about their citizens. Why would they even care or feel any sense of patriotic duty or responsibility to the land of their birth, when they own the most cherished mansions in the priciest neighbourhoods of London, Paris, Washington DC, Berlin, Amsterdam etc? Why would they care when they have millions in USD, GBP, Euro, Deutschmark etc stashed in banks abroad? Afterall the Bible says that where a mans wealth is, there will his heart be also. Our rulers are no more than mere stand in-s for the erstwhile colonial masters whose allegiance was always to Europe. As i write, Babangida has again been flown to Germany after he fell seriously ill some weeks ago. As i wish him a quick recovery i also wish our comatose health sector the same. The children of my generation are already parents whose kids are in primary, some even in secondary schools. Let us hope that our grandchildren will not continue witnessing our future leaders junketting off to Europe to treat common ailments while our hospital continue being mere consulting clinics
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 09:36:00 +0000
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