If the Nigerian doctor was the one who told the late great Dora Akunyili that she did not have cancer, Im sure I would have descended heavily at the crass mediocrity of our health institutions. But thats not the case. The American doctor overuled the diagnosis of the Nigerian doctor and the great Dora Akunyili believed that of The American doctor and probably must have scoffed at the Nigerian doctors diagnosis and made some private remarks of irritation on the doctor while taking that of the American to heart. This Son of David right here would have done just that. Whose report will you believe? There is a proverb in my native patois that says: Owo isi iyeghe etap ke mben iyang- No one washes with saliva by the riverside. We dont need to be reminded of the reputation of our healthcare system in Nigeria. Neither do we need to be refreshed with tales of the behaviorial repertoire of our healthcare workers especially in the public hospitals. Not that we do not have brilliant doctors. Our healthcare workers are not bird-brain in the echelon of their colleagues. But our ironic system makes it so; it encourages the mediocrity in them and discourages the genius in them. And true to this, we do not trust them and we look down on their expertise when confronted with a foreign practisioner. Such was the case of the late Prof Dora Akunyili. Our doctor would have saved her and prevented the current tragedy. But she, like me and many of us, believed the foreign report and set the former aside. That is where the ibibio proverb stated earlier comes in: owo ke mbed inyang akama etam aye iso- one who lived by the riverside used saliva to wash his face. We are all guilty of this. Weve allowed ourselves to be ridiculed. So sad weve lost her. Can she ever be replaced? Perhaps we can prevent more of such tragedies and medical distrust from reocurring by restoring some confidence in our healthcare so that, like the ibibio adage we wont use saliva to wash our faces when there is a river in our backyard. Such a loss! The good die young they old cliche says. But I think that Cliche is rather a curse in a place like Nigeria where there are almost no good and the few of them are not even spared some moment of gasping fresh fettle of breath, while the worst of us breed and fatten to our detriment. Sad, life is, I dont need to be reminded more. Adieu to the Great icon Prof. Dora Akunyili.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Jun 2014 12:00:07 +0000
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