Ba! ba! ember months!

As September began yesterday, my phone became flooded with greetings, well-wishes and of course the prayers about the ember months. What's the big deal about ember months? What makes them more sacred or more hunted than other months? Yoruba folks would even go a step further and coin prayer points like ' ninu osu ber ber ber, ibi o ni ba le e' and the likes, meaning in the ember months, may evil not befall you.  As y'all may know, I love to pray, but what's d point of making some months appear more evil than the other? Unlike what we have been fed with, I doubt extra demons are particularly released from hell starting from September, neither do we have more witches hunting for extra pints of blood. The simple truth is that September heralds the festive season, the holiday season and the break seasons. Lots of families plan their vacations towards the end of the year, a lot of public holidays converge during this lunar season and a lot of parties are scheduled for this period. Village trips, family reunions, office retreats, and spiritual revivals are all clogged in this season: so the roads are over-burdened! Spirits are high, free alcohol every where, jolly traffic officials and merry sounds all around! Therefore, more people tend to throw caution in the air and go on sprees! Of course, that means more accidents and disasters, more lives lost, more dreams shattered and more blame is ascribed to the devil! Dear folks, I am not against raising prayer points of protection and security, but after praying, don't forget about safety tips and precautionary methods to avoid needless loss of lives and properties! I particularly love the ember months because they herald the holiday season! I also get a kick in the butt and a wake up slap in the face in case I had been sluggish or drowsy on the way to achieving the goals I penned down at the beginning of the year! So here's my prayer point about the ember months: may the ember months embarrass us with mind blowing opportunities that will make our goals achievable and results ' embrace-able' Happy Ember Months guys!

one hundred and thirty eight days after

138 days after, and our girls are still missing. 138 days after and their places at the table during meals are still empty. 138 days after and their mothers are still expectant. 138 days after and we still don't have our desire? What is our desire? To have these girls returned to their parents. To ask that they be returned healthy seems like a wishful thinking! How can they be returned healthy after the gruesome experience of being abducted and enslaved from their homes and turned into refugees in a country that claims to be at peace? How can they return healthy after spending months in the custody of such barbarians? The whole world has moved forward, the international media has moved on to juicer stories, the initial frenzy and concern shown by the entertainment world has passed away, and majority of Nigerians have, as usual, accepted this fate and moved on! The question is : if it was your sister, would you move on and forget about her? If it were your daughter, would you accept it as fate and go on with life? I am sure you wouldn't! And so you shouldn't! You shouldn't forget these girls, we shouldn't.  The easiest thing you can do is pray sincerely for them; you can do more by supporting those that have decided to keep the campaign alive! These are the least we can do, but I believe that 1 in every 10 Nigerian can do more. Will you?

Enugu chicken impeachment!

Foodstuffs seem to have found their way back to our polity and they seem to be gaining grounds in influencing the decisions of the Nigerian electorates and lawmakers alike. It is believed that like the first Adam, one of our leaders fell by an apple, and it seems now that another leader is giving way because of his love for chickens! The Deputy governor of Enugu state, Mr Onyebuchi was yesterday impeached by the state house of assembly on account of 'gross misconduct '. One would assume that like most impeached leaders, he would have a long list of offenses reeled out against him, but in his case, he had just two offenses; one of which was the running of a poultry in his official residence. According to his accusers, the stench from the poultry is a disgrace to the state and cannot be condoned. Now it seems that like on the animal farm, in Enugu state, all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. In the Governor's official residence, the Agricultural unit of the governor's house not only manages a poultry, but also has a piggery, and a ranch for rearing cattle. Some have even said that ostriches are being reared too! So I wonder if the fowls in the governors house are special breeds that do not have the smell that chickens are known for; or that the pigs in the pens are sanitary pigs. Anyway, we all know that most leaders that face impeachment threats in the history of our democracy were once faithfuls of the powers that be before they got penned in their bad books, and became candidates for witch hunting. Most of these embattled leaders usually had dirt on their garments and carcasses in their cupboards, so they were really liable for impeachment.  Mr Onyebuchi is however one of the minority whose wardrobe was spick and span. The only offense they could unearth was poultry farming and 'insubordination'. Now that's an epic offense! How dare he refuse to represent the governor in an event? It's good news to my ears that a public office holder in the present day Nigeria couldn't be impeached on corruption charges! I want to believe that his books are clean and no allegations in terms of fund misappropriation could be pinned on him, but a part of me thinks no corruption charges were mentioned because doing so would have exposed not just the deputy but his Boss and cohorts too. As we stay tuned and watch this drama unfold, I hope intending office holders are watching with rapt attention and learning lessons from the present and past leaders. One of the take home lessons from this episode will be: if you ever want to rear a bird, ostriches should be first on your list of options. They stink less!

55 days on nothingness!

At the beginning of the recently-suspended 55 days-old strike by the NMA, I wrote about the relief an average Nigerian doctor feels at the thought of a strike action. I also wrote about the seeming inefficacy of strikes in Nigeria and the fact that the strife between NMA and JOHESU was one that needed to be settled at a round table. The public need not suffer over a family feud, the shrubs need not lose their roots because of a power tussle between two or three elephants.

With the suspension of the strike, one would assume that the NMA has been given its demand. Alas, we haven't. According to the NMA president, the strike was suspended because of the National emergency and talks would continue with the government on the demands that instigated the downing of tools in the first place.
55 days and nothing to show for it,  you would say; but that's not true, at least the National health bill has been passed into law: but we all know that being passed into law isn't the same as implementation. Experience has made that clear.

 The NMA is faced with one challenge they didn't start with though- the suspended residency programme. If the FG claims they want to overhaul the whole programme, then I suppose that we still have 16000 doctors unemployed as at today.
If however, this circular is reversed and the suspension is annulled, then the government will prove again that it is not a government of its words and the suspension was only an attempt to subdue the strongest arm of the NMA . After all, the suspension of the programme was in the best interest of the nation abi?

Dear colleagues, in the eyes of the masses, we are selfish and have lost our respect, in the eyes of our immediate family members we are ' poor things ', in the eyes of some other health workers, we are pathetic losers; different people have tagged and qualified us with unbefitting words.
However, let it be clear to all that the Nigerian doctor has been used and abused, bartered and insulted but will yet serve this country as best as he can, despite the inadequacies of the health sector.

A few weeks from now, every other party will forget this happened, apart from the real victims: the families that lost loved ones and the doctors who have been termed evil.
Corridor consultations will begin again, but only the unwise will continue this trend.

In the nearest future, let us hope that the NMA or ARD will not have to down their tools again. Let us hope that the health sector will thrive and prosper and let us hope that the rivalry in this sector will not lead to anarchy and a complete topple of the already crumbling sector.

God bless Nigeria.

What next after Ebola?

Earlier this week, the Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu announced the discharge and release of 4 survivors of the Ebola Virus disease; Nancy Writebol and Dr Kent Brantley, the American missionaries who contracted the disease in the line of humanitarian services were also given a free slate and allowed to go home to their families after several weeks of isolation. Several people have survived the disease, not just in this recent outbreak, but even from the times when the disease wasn't christened. Dr Thomas Cairns, also a missionary doctor in Guinea in 1972 got infected with an unknown illness and was miraculously cured. 4 years later, when there was an outbreak of a similar disease in the region, his blood was tested and was found to have several loads of antibodies against the Ebola virus. Apart from being survivors of Ebola, all these people have different stories. Most of them are health workers, but not all of them got the quality of care that Dr Kent and Mrs Writebol got. Not all of them got zMAPP, not all of them got symptomatic management. However, all of these identified victims ascribed their healing to God. Dr Kent said his recovery was proof that he served a God that answers prayers. The Nigerian survivors have been kept anonymous, but I am sure that their testimonies might not be different. With the increasing number of Ebola survivors, the Nigerian masses have to know some things about the disease, and here are some of it: A person with Ebola virus is only infectious when he has symptoms. Once the person has been declared cured ( this is done after two separate intensive blood tests have come out as negative), the person is not capable of transmitting the disease. However, the virus has been found in the breastmilk, semen and vaginal fluid of some survivors for about 7 weeks after being cured. So survivors are advised to avoid sex or use condoms for at least 3 months after discharge. Mothers have also been advised to wean their babies off breastmilk during this period. Dear Nigerians, I know our culture is big on stigmatization ( that explains why the names of the survivors have been withheld from the public), but please avoid it. Let's not discriminate against Ebola survivors. We do not know the long term complications of the disease, and these folks need our support to help them get back to life. If you know any survivor, hug them freely, shake them, don't run away. Princess Diana freely hugged people living with AIDS and this helped spread the war against discrimination ; let our celebrities do the same. And even as we pray to continually win this war against Ebola, remember to make your health a priority. Personal hygiene is cheap and is in vogue now. Even survivors can become re-infected. Science has not proven whether the antibodies they have developed against the virus are lifelong or transient. So, both survivors and non-infected people should still take their health seriously. I pray that soon, and very soon, the WHO will declare Nigeria, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the whole world free of this present Epidemic; and I hope that the Nigerian government and Nigerians will pay more attention to Research. Who knows, maybe Bitter kola ( or salt water) indeed is the cure to this deadly virus?

Another Fallen Compatriot

It's common knowledge that you don't speak ill of the dead, but there are few exceptions . Every time I think of Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian who lost his sister to Ebola and conveyed the same disease across borders unto our shores, all I want to do is say something hateful/ hurting about him ;even our President couldn't resist the urge not to. A lot of people have postulated theories about why he came into Nigeria despite his contact with his deceased sister, and I don't really give a hoot about what his reason(s) were; all I know is that he has poured sand into our little garri ( which we are managing as a nation), he has added fuel into an already blazing inferno. More people have died from a disease that could have been avoided if Patrick Sawyer hadn't stepped foot in Nigeria. A few weeks ago, I dedicated a post to Dr Sheik Umar Khan who gave up his life while fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone. And today, I am doing the same for our very own Dr Ameyo Stella Adadevoh who lost her life in the course of duty. She didn't give up her life, she lost it. Dr Sheik had a heads up before he got involved, she however didn't. She was dutifully doing her job and lost her livelihood and life in the process. Thanks to Patrick Sawyer, we've lost another specialist. Nigeria doesn't need a needless loss of consultants, not now, not ever. We need more specialists than we can imagine. And to see them lose their lives needlessly is appalling. Like most fallen Nigerian heroes, I hope Dr Ameyo's death won't be futile. I hope our health sector will become a system worth dying for, I hope medical practice in Nigeria will one day be worth the sacrifices we have made and still make. GEJ has suspended residency programme, a lot of young doctors that planned to start their residency in Nigeria are already registering for international exams, and now we have lost one of the few endocrinologists in the country. If the dead had ears, I am sure Patrick Sawyer's would be filled with curses; but it's too late to cry over this spilled stale milk. It has been confirmed that another Liberian got into Nigeria and is being treated for Ebola! And you wonder why the Liberian ports and Nigerian ports still allow this immigration. Porous borders I know, let the government step up their game. We have too much on our plates to handle right now: the absence of security, the chaos in the health sector, Ebola epidemic, lack of basic amenities, plummeting educational sector, and now let's add porous and almost non-existing borders! Let's also not forget that our Chibok sisters are still missing ( I find it hard to believe that they are still missing). Which way forward? Responsible followership. What does that mean? It means getting involved. 2015 is here, and they will roll out their drums and campaigns. Vote wisely, use your head not your heart. Leave out sentiments ( tribal, religious, gender, etc) and make an informed decision. Don't stop there, educate the unlearned. Break down the big English words and let them know what is at stake. Help them make informed decisions too. Then hold the elected leaders responsible. Ask questions. They are answerable to us. Enough with 'siddon look' approach . Let's do away with being reactive followers, it's time to be proactive. Let's organise town hall meetings, quarterly appraisals etc It's time to save our country for our future's sake. It's begins, continues and ends with us, the Nigerian People.

Presidency vs Residency

I really don't know where to start today. I am trying to be reasonable and unbiased about the present challenge in the health sector. I am using all within me to curb the quanta of negative energy aroused whenever I give a thought to GEJ and his actions! Imagine how hard I tried not to literarily implode with anger when I learnt that the President had suspended Residency training programme in Nigeria; thereby sacking more than 16,000 doctors nationwide. I thought it was a sick joke, one not worth my reaction. But apparently it isnt. The Federal government has taken the cowardly path to resolve the present crisis and I suppose that they think we will follow suit: like helpless professionals back down without a fight. I assume that somewhere in their thinking, they'll expect resident doctors to come with their tails between their legs and beg for an appointment. If medical school taught me nothing, there's one attribute which was well developed in me, and that's tenacity. And I know that every Nigerian Resident doctor has more than an ounce of this atttibute in them. We will not cower like cowards. We will not back down. When did it become a crime to fight for what's ours? When did it become wrong to let your employer know your grievances? You however can't blame the president or the minister or the permanent secretary that signed the document. They do not employ the services of the health sector in Nigeria. At least, not personally. They do not need the resident doctors, neither will their children need specialists to attend to them in the future.  After all, they'll remain in government and if not, there will always be looted money available for them to fly out of the country for the slightest ailment. What will happen in Nigeria? More doctors will leave the country. More specialists - in- training will get trained outside the shores of Nigeria; and those that love Nigeria enough, will come back and make the masses pay through their noses for their foreign expertise. GEJ has opened the floodgates for a brain drain and shown just how much he cares about the health sector. A doctor is first a human, a Nigerian, a person with needs like every other Nigerian before he became a doctor. A lot of people brandish the Hippocratic Oath like a weapon whenever a strike action is on; they "forget" the other part of the same oath that says a doctor should get his due. I smell a storm brewing. I know that the Nigerian masses will survive this storm like we always do, but not without casualties. In the words of Jesus, a prophet is without honour in his town; the Federal government, the Nigerian People and some other health professionals have proved times and times again that they do not appreciate Nigerian trained Doctors, and I think it's high time we looked for greener pastures where our services are needed and appreciated. Let the Exodus begin.