Need for purposeful response for improved healthcare

There is currently no known vaccine in preventing the global pandemic – Coronavirus (Covid-19). Healthcare experts say if you wash your hands regularly with soap or with alcohol-based hand-rub and observe some other basic-level infection control precautions, you may wade off the demon disease; or reduce likely exposure.

Globally, death toll arising from Covid-19 continues on an alarming rise with the most developed countries actively topping the chart. What exactly does healthcare look like in Nigeria; obsolete and ill-equipped, with unavailability of essential vaccines and drugs. In 2017, Zahra and Aisha Buhari, daughter and wife of the Nigerian president, both raised different alarms that the clinic which services the Aso Rock was lacking in the supply of basic drugs. Zahra alleged that the Aso Rock clinic lacks conventional Paracetamol tablets, while Aisha decried that the facility does not have a single syringe despite the huge budgetary allocation of three billion it receives.

Before the pandemic, Nigeria’s healthcare was in a deplorable condition, having an estimated population of more than 200 million people and only 72 thousand-plus Nigerians trained medics. According to the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), over half of Nigerian doctors practise abroad. The rough statistic is that there are 42,000 doctors to 200 million people and this, as the World Health Organization (WHO) puts it means that the physician-to-patient ratio is four doctors to 10,000 patients.

Citizens do not have an actionable right of health care per se under the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended. Although, the Constitution under Section 33 provides that citizens have a right to life, it does not envisage that ill-health could derogate from the right. The major pronouncement on healthcare in the constitution is encapsulated under the ‘fundamental objectives and directive principle of state policy’ in Section 17 (3) (c), (d).

The courts have held that the above fundamental objectives and directive principle of state policy are ‘non-justifiable’. In law, an enactment is non-justifiable if it is non-enforceable.

Notwithstanding, courts have also held that certain conditions could activate the fundamental objectives and directive principle of state policy to make them become full-fledged actionable rights.

Though Cuba is regarded as poor, its healthcare outperforms many others globally. In Cuba, doctors annually visit each household, checking hearts, blood pressure, and probing into lifestyle. As at 2015, Cuba’s physician-to-patient ratio was eight doctors to 1000 citizens. This is more than double of the physician-to-patient ratio in the UK and the US. Healthcare is a fundamental human right in Cuba. And what more, while the entire world grapples with Covid-19, Cuba has gone a step further; it is now taking the burden of the world upon itself and presently, Cuban doctors are in Italy rescuing lives from coronavirus.

The outbreak of the deadly coronavirus disease should force Nigeria to make a purposeful resolve for an improved healthcare.

Tope Akinyode

Lagos

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