THE ‘resurrection’ of 70-year-old Amos Otene after he was certified
dead by medical practitioners and made to spend over 30 hours in a
mortuary in Makurdi, Benue State capital has thrown up a debate.
Doctors, according to a report, at a private hospital in the town had,
on Wednesday, August 26, 2015, certified Otene dead at 4.30 a.m. and
wheeled him into the mortuary, awaiting instructions from members of the
family for embalming.
The report stated that, but for the visit by the son of the
‘deceased’ to confirm the news, the Otene family would have been
preparing to inter the agriculturalist who retired from Benue State
civil service three years ago. The old man had toothache and was rushed
to the private clinic, on Tuesday, August 25. A day later, he was
certified dead and the doctors whose names were not mentioned in the
report could have immediately ordered his embalming, but there was no
family member to give the go-ahead. So they wheeled him to the morgue.
30 hours thereafter, Eche Otene, the son of the ‘deceased’, who lives
in Lafia, Nasarawa State, came visiting and the hospital was thrown
into confusion when the father raised his hand to acknowledge the
presence of his son and followed that gesture by sitting up on the
mortuary trolley.
The question now is: Was the man sentenced to death by an
inexperienced medical team or he actually died but was brought back to
life by God?
To the science-inclined minds, Pa Otene could not have died in the
first place and the question of resurrection was out of the question.
The only explanation, according to a Makurdi-based medical practitioner,
Dr. Ameh Edace, is that the retiree could only have been “in a long
coma”.
The Medical Director of Rekiya Memorial Hospital, Kaduna, Dr. Bello
Mohammed, said that “in the history of medicine, there has not been any
case of anybody coming back to life after being certified dead.” He
added: “If a person is pronounced clinically dead, he remains dead and
there is no way he can come back to life, certainly not after 24 hours.
On this case in question, the only medical explanation is that the
patient was in a long coma.”
To this school of thought therefore, if doctors had certified Pa
Otene dead, then the competence of such doctors should be called to
question. In other words, something must be amiss with the death
certification.
Head of God
The miracle school of thought, however, is quick to differ from the
medical point of view, arguing that miracles are real and what happened
in Pa Otene’s case could only have been the hand of God at work. Benue
State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Archbishop
Yimam Orkwar, had not read the story when we called him, but, as a
believer, he described the debate as unnecessary, urging Nigerians and
indeed the world at large not to doubt the ability of God to heal or
even bring back to life anybody certified dead by man.
According to him, this can only be a miracle of God and not a
medical error because it’s not possible for a man erroneously pronounced
dead to survive 30 hours in the morgue. “It must have been God, who had
promised to do great miracles in our time, who raised the man to life
and at the time he did,” the archbishop submitted.
Warri-based God’s Kingdom Society, GKS, affirmed that stories of dead
people coming back to life after they had been certified dead abound
with some waking up in the mortuary, others reviving while lying in
state, some others just before the grave is covered. The church recalled
that several years ago, in England, the ambulance conveying a corpse to
the graveyard had an accident and the man rose up.
The church stated: “In several of these cases, one cannot escape the
conclusion that the persons were not yet dead though they were not
exhibiting signs of life anymore. Human beings are imperfect. Medical
doctors could certify someone dead whereas there is still life in him.
Matter of life is in the hands of God. The Bible says that in the hands
of God Almighty is the soul (life) of every living thing, and the
breaths of all mankind”.
The GKS’s Publicity Secretary, Brother Benedict Hart, argued that
despite the advances made in science, it is only God who knows all there
is to know about life. Hart went on: “The medical people have their
limitations. Someone could still have life in him whereas doctors could
have certified him dead, going by what the books say or what they have
been taught.
“Another point is that it is a very easy thing for God to raise
people back to life to show man that He exists and that He is the Owner
of life. Such miracle will move people to fear Him and praise His name.
God told Pharoah: `And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee
up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared
throughout all the earth.’ (Exodus 9:16)
“The second book of Kings has the record of casket bearers who, on
seeing a band of marauders, abandoned the body they were carrying.
Incidentally, the corpse fell into the burial place of Elisha and the
man `revived, and stood up on his feet’ (2 Kings 13:21). This was a
clear case of God doing a miracle to revive the belief of the people in
His power over life and death. Death is one of the ways God instils in
man the somber reality that he is mortal; that, no matter how powerful a
man may be, he is still subject to death. He alone has power to bring a
man from dead condition back to life. Some of the cases of those who
came back to life fall into this category; they had actually died but
were raised by the Almighty, just to make the point about the infinitude
of His power and pointedly declare to man his limitations.
“Even if someone had been in the mortuary for four days, and God
wants to make a statement by bringing him back to life, nothing with Him
is impossible (Jeremiah 32:27, 17). How many days was Lazarus in the
grave before Jesus Christ brought him back to life? In fact, Christ told
Martha, `…I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).
Death stalks
There is a third school of thought made up of those who had had
reason to rush close relations to some of the nation’s health
institutions at the various levels. About 90 per cent of respondents
from different parts of the country agree that the medical sector is not
dead but in slumber with several arguing that, as a result, business is
booming for traditional healers and alternative medicine practitioners,
especially herbal preparations from Asia and other parts of the world.
Delta State, a major oil and agricultural producing state, was created by military fiat on August 27, 1991.
Thus far, the state government has spent ¦ 5,463,776,470.82 on the
procurement of equipment for its hospitals and health centres.
Despite this, the General Hospital in Agbarho, Delta State has been
disconnected from the national grid in the last two years as a result of
technical challenges. When the electricity authority, in collaboration
with the Agbarho Urhobo Improvement Union, AUIU, fixed the fault this
year, the Benin Electricity Distribution Company slammed the secondary
health institution with a bill of over N1 million which the hospital’s
resources could ill afford. Since then, except you make personal
arrangement to supply diesel to power its generator, if your pregnant
wife requires surgery to deliver your baby, your best bet is to look
elsewhere because a visit to the hospital at night is a sorry sight.
The story of Ughelli Central Hospital and its counterpart in Warri
may not be that pathetic, but they are no better as the facilities are
in dire need of maintenance and stories abound of patients who leave the
state’s various healthcare facilities worse off because there are
several breeding grounds for malaria-bearing mosquitoes whenever it
rains. Roads to most accident and emergency wards in the state are
ridden with yawning potholes that make ambulances and their passengers,
mostly persons who require utmost tranquility, dance to strange rhythms.
These developments are not perculiar to Delta State. Neighboring Edo
State plays host to a number of tertiary health institutions, some owned
by the federal and the state governments. A visit to the University
of Benin Teaching Hospital commissioned in 1973 as the sixth of the
first generation teaching hospitals in Nigeria, to complement her sister
institution, University of Benin, and provide secondary and tertiary
care to the then Midwestern Region (now Edo and Delta States) and
environs, easily exposed the tragedy that is our nation’s healthcare
delivery system.
At inception, its goals were encapsulated in her motto: Healing,
Research and Training. Initially commissioned as a 300-bed hospital in
1973, UBTH is said to have expanded her facilities tremendously over the
years such that it now has facilities for over 500 in-patients.
On September 2, 2015, a middle-aged man was rushed to the Accident
and Emergency Ward of UBTH and, after preliminary examinations, the
medical team on duty prescribed drugs for him. The wife, after
enquiries, sped off in search of the pharmacy. For a first timer, the
process of procurement of drugs at UBTH, to say the least, can be
arduous. The lady walked the long distance to the pharmacy where she
was further directed to the revenue unit to make payments before
returning to collect the drugs. While she was in the process, her
husband was reported to have rolled from the bed he had been put and
fallen face down on the concrete floor of the ward. He allegedly died
even as an army of paramedics, porters, nurses and several doctors
watched.
Poor lady! It was bad enough that her husband of seven years passed
on leaving her with three hapless mouths to feed. She went hysterical,
screaming and screaming. There are claims of several of such incident in
the hospital.
One of the objectives of UBTH is to provide facilities for training
of high and middle level manpower for the health industry and spearhead
research opportunities for lecturers in the university and other
interested persons with local morbidity burden as research question.
Asemota Ebhonhon, not real name, whose father allegedly died after
two weeks at the Neorology Ward A5 of the hospital, concluded that the
only focus of the UBTH was manpower development, arguing that all the
days the father spent in the ward could have been beneficial if the
experienced medical practitioners devoted more time to doing their
duties. According to Asemota, “these non-committed young lads are made
to gamble with patients while the doctors, registrars, consultants come
once in a while to flip through medical case notes without appreciable
inputs to help dying patients. Where there are obvious mistakes by the
boys and girls on housemanship, patients are not carried along and, at
the end, they are made to bear the consequence of the laxity.”
Private clinics
Asemota, a UK-based medical student, maintained that the consultants
are more pre-occupied with their private clinics, stressing: “Can you
imagine a UBTH without a CT scan machine? Instead, they will recommend
you to some private diagnostic outfits in town. My father had stroke and
was rushed here and they kept pumping intravenous fluids into his
system until he was bloated. My elementary knowledge tells me that the
objective of IV fluid is to carefully achieve and maintain a euvolemic
and isotonic environment within the body as well as to provide for a
variety of nutritional and pharma-cologic interventions. They did this
without consideration for the ability of the patient to sustain fluid
volume changes that result from intravenous administration of salt and
water.”
Lamenting the poor state of the nation’s healthcare system, a Delta
State-born medical practitioner described the situation as “pathetic”,
maintaining that the National Hospital, Abuja, established under Decree
36 of 1999 and commissioned on May 22, 1999 by Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar
(retd), with state-of-the-art technology, could not respond to Senator
Godswill Akpabio’s injuries arising from an accident.
Akpabio, the immediate past governor of Akwa Ibom State, sustained
injuries in an accident in Abuja but preferred to seek medical help
overseas than do so at the N30 billion Ibom Specialist Hospital, Uyo,
he commissioned before leaving office last May. Unveiling the facility
then, Akpabio told Nigerians the hospital was of world-class specialist
standard with ultra-modern medical facilities that would attract medical
tourism to the state.
A doctor friend, who wanted to remain anonymous, blamed politicians
for the sorry state of our healthcare delivery system, saying: “Our
politicians travel abroad for ailments that can be handled by our
doctors. I recall a situation whereby a Nigerian parliamentarian was
diagnosed for a life-threatening ailment by a medical practitioner who
recommended surgery. The politician left and took the next available
plane to the U.S. for the surgery. The good news was that he had to wait
three additional days before the surgery was done by the same doctor he
rejected in Lagos, paying five times the original charge. Death is the
cheapest commodity in Nigeria, and it is available mostly for the poor”.
This position was echoed by several medical practitioners during the
course of our survey.
Conspiracy
There is also a conspiracy theory that suggests that doctors and
other practitioners in the health care sector cover up for each other’s
failures and faults. An 88-year old woman was rushed to a private
clinic in Agbarho, Delta State, on Sunday, August 30, 2015 with
complications arising from high blood pressure. She was praying to God
to spare her life as she walked into the clinic where an array of
auxiliary nurses held sway while the medical director was said to be out
of town. One of the nurses, after preliminary investigation in the
absence of a qualified medical practitioner, decided to administer an
injection which immediately sent the old woman to a coma. Nobody has
admitted the obvious medical error. The children have since then
committed huge sums to revive the old woman and may be considering a
legal action against the private clinic.
Nigeria is said to have one of the highest maternal and infant
mortality rates in the world and this necessitated the greater attention
given to maternal and child health (MCH) services in the country’s
Bamako Initiative (BI) programme. MCH consumers, who are often poor, are
also at extraordinary risk of receiving poor or no health care.
Nigeria’s infant mortality rate is about 96 per 1,000 live births in
rural area against 75 per 1,000 live births in urban area (East African
Medical Journal, 2004).
Infant mortality (death of children under one year) and under-five
mortality are 100 and 210 per 1000 live births respectively and these
deaths from preventable causes such as malaria (24%), pneumonia (20%),
diarrhea (16%), measles (6%) and HIV/AIDS account for more than 71% of
the estimated one million under five death in Nigeria in 2004 (FMOTT,
2007).
Some of the contributory factors to infant mortality in Nigeria
include malnutrition, poor environmental hygiene, low access and
utilization of quality health care services by women and children;
others include but not limited to low female literacy level, poor
family health care practices and lack of access to safe water.
An overview of healthcare financing in Nigeria, published in
International Journal of Health Policy Management on January 2, 2015,
noted: “The situation in Nigeria shows that government funding for the
health sector has been unsatisfactory over the years. Evidence reveals
that, by the early 1980s, the annual government allocation to health was
estimated at $533.6 million. However, it nose-dived, reaching a trough
of $58.8 million in 1987. Between 1996 and 1999, there was an increase,
and by 2002, it rose to $524.4 million, then climaxing to about $1.79
billion in 2013.
“The irregularity in budgetary allocation to health reflects in the
percentage of total yearly budget, as evidence reveals a pattern from as
low as 3.6 per cent in 1996 increasing to 5.0 per cent in 1997; then
declining to 2.7 per cent in 2000 and then rising marginally to 5.6 per
cent by 2013. Some reports even reveal it remained at about 1 per cent
in the 1990s to just under 5 per cent in the last decade”.
According to a study published in the Nigerian Medical Journal
titled: ‘Community based healthcare financing: An untapped option to a
more effective healthcare funding in Nigeria’, “between 1996 and 2000,
federal budgetary allocation to health in Nigeria ranged from N4,838
million in 1996 to N17,581.9 million in 2000. Health budget as a
percentage of total Federal Government budget had adopted a rather
irregular pattern from as low as 3.4 per cent in 1996, increasing to
just 5.0 per cent in 1997 and declining to a paltry 2.7 per cent in
2000.
“This irregularity in pattern has also been reflected in the
allocation to capital expenditure, which had ranged from N1,659.6
million to N11,579.6 million over the period of 1996 to 2000.”
According to another study on health care expenditure, health status
and national productivity in Nigeria (1999-2012), published in Journal
of Economics and International Finance, between 2005 and 2012, Nigeria’s
Health Development Index (HDI) value increased from 0.434 to 0.471, an
average annual increase of about 1.2 per cent.
However, health spending as a proportion of the Federal Government
expenditures shrank from an average of 3.5 per cent in the 1970s to less
than two per cent in the 1980s and 1990s.
Nigeria was ranked 187th among the 191 United Nations member states
in 2000. That same year, Nigeria spent 4USD per capita on health, below
WHO’s minimum benchmark of 14USD per capita for developing countries.
By 2002, total health expenditure was a dismal 4.7 per cent. In 2012,
total health expenditure as percentage of GDP stood at 5.3 per cent,
ranked 153 out of 187th countries and territories.
0 comments:
Post a Comment