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Professor Ken Ozoilo, National President, MDCAN.
By
Wed Apr 07 2021
Professor Ken Ozoilo is a medical consultant with the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH) and National President, Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association of Nigeria (MDCAN). In this interview, he explains how fairer and healthier healthcare services can be achieved for every Nigerian.
In Nigeria, the larger population lives in the hinterland where there are various challenges to health care accessibility. How do you think these challenges can be mitigated to access equitable and quality health service delivery?
The first step would be to build an all-inclusive health care system that does not discriminate based on the ability to pay. Our current model is predominantly out of pocket payment and as a result, many families are unable to pay and many more are impoverished by crushing hospital bills once there is a major health challenge.
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Our Correspondents
Consultants have taken over the provision of skeletal services to patients following the ongoing strike by the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), which enters the fifth day today.
Relatives have also intensified the evacuation of patients to private hospitals, THISDAY has learnt.
When THISDAY visited the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi and Federal Medical Centre in Azare, only very senior physicians and nurses were attending to patients.
Bauchi State branch Chairman of NARD, Dr. Muhammad Nur Algazali, said members of the union had withdrawn their services in compliance with the directive of the national body of the union.
President of NARD, Dr Uyilawa Okhuaihesuyi, made the call on the urgent need to ban officials from traveling abroad for medical purposes during an interview with Daily Trust in Abuja.
He said doing so will bring the desired improvement in the country’s health sector and also save the lives of millions of poor Nigerians who do not have the means of traveling abroad to attend to their health challenges.
Dr Okhuaihesuyi said: “If medical tourism is banned in Nigeria, it will encourage the public officials to be able to develop the health system in the country.”
Asked if that would not put many lives at risk considering the poor state of the country’s health system, and the fact that many people who embark on medical tourism do so for serious and chronic diseases such as kidney, cancer and heart diseases, among others, he said: “We have one of the best set of health workers in the world, and that is why most countries tend to scavenge on doctors in Nigeria.