The Orthodox way of responding to signs of ill health is to first go and take a laboratory test of what the issue is. Secondly, you go to a health facility and the first person you see there is the nurse. The nurse takes your information and your vitals and prepares you to see the doctor. The doctor is step three. The doctor examines you and gives you prescriptions. You then take the prescriptions to the fourth and final stage, the pharmacist, to get the prescriptions from the doctor.
Now see our dilemma. Beginning from the first point of call:
1. The Lab Technician – recently, UNICAL commendably suspended, Dr. Joseph Idung, Head of Department of the Science Lab Tech Department, for alleged financial infractions. Allegations of money-for-grades are rife in the department. But if people now pay their way through these sensitive places that have to do with life and death, who stand to gain?
2. The Nurse – As you enter the hospital with your test result, they are the first to meet. They take your information and your vitals and prepare you to see the doctor. Let me inform you painfully that, ALL the schools training nurses and community health workers in Cross River state are cesspools of barefaced corruption. All the colleges of nursing, from the one in Moore Road in Calabar to the one in Itigidi, to the one in Ogoja and the one in Obudu, plus the College of Health Technology Calabar, students are paying money for grades. It is also worthy of note that after our consistent reporting on this same matter, Governor Otu ordered the reversal of some of the levies in the College of Health Technology and sacked the board and the boards of the Colleges of Nursing. While that is a very commendable step in the right direction, more still has to be done to stamp the menace out.
3. The Doctor – When the nurses are done with you, they direct you to the almighty doctor. And my most immediate thoughts take me to the late Professor Thomas Agan. A former Chief Medical Director CMD of the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital. He was a senior friend. Once, I was sitting out with him at Jorany Hotel, Asari Eso. In the course of our conversation, he remarked that very soon, we will have doctors who do not know anything about the practice of medicine because of the recklessness of some lecturers who now collect bribes in the medical school to pass students. I need not say more about that. Many of the students have also shared their experiences.
4. The Pharmacist – When the doctor is done with you, he gives your prescriptions that you take to the pharmacist to get. Recently, UNICAL removed the Head of Department HOD, Pharmacology, Dr. Joseph Akpan. Why? He marked 242 scripts, altered marks for 235 students, and allotted marks to 2 students who didn’t sit for PHM 311 examination. So close your eyes and imagine the quality and competence of the next set of pharmacists we will have in our health facilities.
So when people fall sick and are rushed to health facilities in our State, who are they going to see? caregivers or butchers?
Let me add a very important caveat that, there are exceptions to this picture I have painted. There are those who are genuinely studying for their examinations and are coming out with flying colors, as well as some lecturers and management staff who have kept themselves above the menacing corruption in these places. I also want to ask those who perpetrate these atrocities a question, don’t they themselves, their children, relations, and loved ones, ever fall sick? Who are the health professionals that will treat them or have they all stolen and kept enough to always fly abroad for their health care?
That is why I requested that you join me in praying never to fall sick, even though sickness is inevitable. Because, until you or a loved one falls sick, you may not understand the enormity of this mess. But if God helps you not to be sick, you may still be ill but God will save you from medical professionals like the ones discussed above.
God did it once for Rose Marie Bentley of Oregon. In October 2017, Rose Marie Bentley, a pet feed store owner, passed away in Portland, Oregon USA, and in honor of her wishes, her body was donated to research at a university in Portland. She died of natural causes at 99.
Less than two years later, in April 2019, students in an anatomy class, were the first to notice that many of her organs were not where they were supposed to be. Medically speaking, she was sick all her life, but she didn’t know. It was widely reported that her liver, stomach, and other abdominal organs were reversed right to left, creating a mirror image of the human anatomy.
Doctors would have torn her apart to “correct” the organs if they ever noticed their positions. Doctors are still stunned that Mrs. Bentley, was able to live such a long and healthy life despite her ‘condition’, while others said, she lived that long because she never had to go see the meds.
Citizen Agba Jalingo is the Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, a Cross Riverian, and writes from Lagos.
NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.
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