Poor health policy accounts for low life expectancy in Nigeria —Adeniran, Joseph

Founder of Medflit, Mr Yinka Adeniran and his partner, Dr Ayodele Joseph, take a look at the nation’s health policy, low life expectancy in the country, benefits of tele-medicine and more in this interview by AKINWALE ABOLUWADE.

Nursing, as a profession, is female dominated; what attracted you to the course?
When I got to the United States of America, my intention was to study pharmacy but along the line, I settled for Nursing. Essentially, I love medical line and I love to provide care for the sick. I am eight years in practice and the experience is wonderful. The fact that I had opportunity and got exposed to good training was a great advantage for me.

We never endorsed any candidate for 2019 presidential election — CAN

In Nigeria, there are occasional conflicts between doctors and nurses over who heads the team; can you draw the line based on their roles?

Trainings for nurses and doctors are different. It is assumed that the patient belongs to the doctor while our main role, as nurses, is to support doctors in giving care to the sick. Nurses are patients’ advocates. We stand in the gap between the patients and the doctors in ensuring that patients get the best of care. We spend more time with patients. There is no basis for conflict between doctors and nurses; the goal is to provide quality medical care and that should go unhindered.

What is your assessment of health care delivery in Nigeria?

Well, I do not practice here but actually, health policy in Nigeria is not made attractive. The facilities that are available cannot cater for the ever-increasing population, so healthcare is not readily accessible in Nigeria like we have in the developed countries of the world. Salaries of health workers here are not attractive and that accounts for movement of health professionals to greener pastures. Here, a lot of people self-medicate, they buy drugs at chemists without doctors’ prescription. Health policy in Nigeria needs to be reviewed. Imagine the rate at which people consume herbal concoctions that don’t have correct measurement. Herbs that are taken by the people were not properly analysed to determine their properties and the doze of toxin in them. Toxins, as we know, are dangerous to human organs. When we strengthen our health policy people will change to do the right thing. Ultimately, there should be total health reform in the country. That life expectancy in Nigeria is below 55 years today is a function of poor health care system.

You are back in Nigeria talking about tele-medicine; can you break this down?

What we are trying to do now is to domesticate some of the experiences that we gathered overseas using the advantage of technology with Medflit driving the entire concept. Medflit is a tele-medicine platform that was designed to make medical care assessible to citizens irrespective of their remoteness to doctors and medical facilities. We are aware of the shortage of doctors. With tele-medicine, there will be no reason for people to self-medicate. Today, you can talk to doctors on phone. The excuse of inability to get expert’s advice is no longer there.

Are you in support of a national health policy that will incorporate traditional medicine?

For herbal drugs, it is really a dicey situation because you cannot measure the content of beneficial properties in herbs neither can you measure the level of toxin in them.

Most of our health practitioners are going out of the country to seek greener pastures in foreign countries; what must be done to keep the professionals at home?

Government should pay more attention to the health sector. Currently, we don’t maintain our hospitals and other health resources – both human and non-human. Our doctors are one of the most poorly paid in the world. We just neglect the health sector. As said earlier, there are about four doctors to 10,000 patients in the country. We need to pump more money into the health sector. It is common knowledge that there is brain drain in the country. Working as a doctor is not easy here. Doctors work for longer hours and are paid less. In Nigeria, about 2,000 doctors go out yearly in search of greener pastures.

What is Medflit and what is the objective of the organisation?

Medflit is an online platform that allows patients to consult doctors at a low cost and enables them to interact with pharmacists as well. Tele-medicine has various components like booking of hospital appointments using smartphones. They can then go for consultation in the same hospital where the doctors that they interacted with online work. We have affiliations with pharmacies, hospitals and physicians. This makes it possible for patients to have their medical records on their phones. Judging by the doctors to patients ratio, you will agree that there are some areas where there are no doctors. Tele-medicine would make it possible for doctors who are in urban areas to interact with patients who are in rural parts of the country. With this,  you are free from the problem of waiting on queue for long hours to see the doctor or falling into wrong hands.

One may be skeptical about relying on a doctor who you were not familiar with but just met online?

As a user, you can just log on to see a list of available doctors, check their curriculum vitae and review their prices and services. You can even review the available feedbacks from patients who are under the care of the doctors to know their efficiency.

What are the limitations of tele-medicine?

Consultations may require more than telephone interaction; your case may require seeing the doctor one on one. At that, you may have to just book an appointment with the doctor to see him or her later. But there are simple cases that could be addressed right online.