By Maijama’a Adamu
Nineteen years ago, I had a nasty experience. It was not personal to me or someone close to me. As a matter of fact, it was someone’s experience narrated to me by eye-witnesses close to me, and that included my wife whom I took to the Yola Specialist Hospital for the delivery of our first daughter, Khadijat. They told me of a woman brought to the hospital with a dead child in her womb. The unborn child was certified dead. She needed to be operated on to get rid of the dead child so as to save her from death, too. Her husband was unable to pay for the operation and had to go only God knew where to look for the money. In excruciating pain, the woman started crying. “Zan mutu”, she kept repeating. Meaning, “I will die.” She indeed died. She died an avoidable death for a system and a culture of absolute lack of care. Her case was, and still is, like a black dot that dots the healthcare landscape across this nation. A case of killing the people and crediting the Almighty for it. That way, questions of why, what and how about deaths are waved aside, hence, who really cares for the poor?
A big question. Mai Mala Buni does! I have proofs. I am a witness to the proofs. First, let me contextualize the phenomenon. Medicare is not about claims. It’s about genuine and unwavering commitment to a noble coause that upholds the sanctity of human lives. The Yobe system under the soft-spoken, determined gentleman governor, Mai Mala Buni, works on a tripod administrative philosophy of Yobe first, future-bound vision (futuristic) and a conviction that the ‘Y’ in Yobe has nothing to do with alphabetical position of the letter as second to the last. No need to at this point make reference to revolution at the elementary level of healthcare delivery, the primary healthcare centres. The only emphasis here is, as his political motorcade followed the people, ward after ward, in search for their votes, he repeated the rounds with delivery of primary healthcare centres per ward. Somehow along the way, he got overambitious and embarked on a project that overshadowed every other similar project anywhere in Nigeria, the 375-bed capacity Maternity and Child Care health complex, which is undoubtedly Nigeria’s largest maternity and child care clinic.
The massive structure, with a commanding presence, made up of seven blocks of one-storey buildings with patient-friendly spaces, fits into global best practice in modern maternal, newborn, and paediatric health care. The architectural masterpiece satisfactorily answers the expectations of expectant/nursing mothers, their newborn babies as well as children in general. Imagine 64 open cubicles, five call duty rooms, five satellite pharmacies, one side laboratory and four nurses’ stations just for the obstetrics and gynaecology wing of the complex. The Special Baby Care Unit is something else, with its three adjoining generously spacious and nicely done wards, 28-cot wards for newborn babies suspected of sepsis, 10-cot wards for out-born babies, and 10-cot wards for in-born babies, four nurses’ stations, 10-bed room/unit for their nursing mothers. In addition, there is a 10-bed room for nursing mothers to breastfeed their newborn babies, five doctors’ rest/call duty rooms, five nurses’ rest/change rooms, five offices for the unit matron in charge, four additional offices for health information management/documentation, seminar room, a library, kitchen and stores.
Every inch of this project is simply edged with a lasting touch of appealing beauty and guarantees for efficiency. Most importantly, beyond architectural beauty, the edifice is poised for uninterrupted service delivery every minute of the day and every second of the night so that avoidable deaths like that of my nasty experience are absolutely avoided. Making reference as I did to the imposing presence and breathtaking beauty of the Yobe State Maternal and Child Care Hospital that its distinctive and pervasive soothing aura alone inspires hope to patients even before administration of medicament, one may get scared of the cost factor. Affordability was at the centre of the death of that lady that cried to death. Tie cost to medical emergencies, and you are surely forcing tearful agonizing deaths on the masses. Remember, the mission of the gentleman governor of Yobe is saving lives at a cost for the government.
To understand the passion and commitment of His Excellency, Mai Mala Buni, CON, to the sanctity of lives of humanity in Yobe State and not just Yobians, one needs to look at more complex medical situations in the state. Imagine patients put on routine dialysis in Nigeria today. One of two things sure workout: either one is bouyant to afford the cost or one embarks on slow and steady journey to death. In Yobe, it’s an absolutely different scenario. DIALYSIS IS FREE there! I heard the governor say so. I saw the machines deployed for the service of the people and I listened to trained professionals explaining the workings and wonders of the services in the state and their words emphatically validated the claims of the governor. This gladdens my heart. Of course, followers of the healthcare revolution in the state know that it requires visitations to the systems and facilities on ground to appreciate the depth of the matter. A story has trended of the retiree in Bauchi State that took his child to Egypt for medication. They were billed for a second round of treatment and were about embarking on the second leg trip when they caught wind of the Yobe medical wonders.
They gave it a try and that saved them a fortune that would have been drained on medical tourism. The cost that saved them that huge cost is ridiculously too low to be believed. I had a timeout with the CMD of the Yobe State University Teaching Hospital. After a compelling narrative of the superlative difference the state is making in healthcare development, he ordered that I be taken on excursion to the defining facilities for healthcare services. I saw there, first-hand, the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, a massive scan that uses a strong magnetic field and radio waves to create detailed images of the organs and tissues within the body. Their computed tomography (TC) scan is no less captivating. At the dialysis rooms, I looked at the machines and thought of free service and said to myself, it took a great mind, a brave heart and compelling passion to contemplate such an idea. As they say, challenges are like grasses, where you cut one, two grow, and if you cut two be prepared to deal with four. That was the case of acute kidney conditions that plagued the people of Borno and Yobe states. Both states have responded as responsible as they thought to be, investing in routine treatment and long-term research and investigation to ascertain what was truly at stake and what must be done about it.
Governor Buni saw the necessity of more proactive and collaborative measures. He led a team of healthcare managers from the state to some world renown health institutions to strike an interventionary synergy for capacity enhancement for the Yobe State University Teaching Hospital to make the tertiary health institution better positioned to proactively respond to abrupt emergencies. Governor Buni seems fond of the adjective “futuristic” in the course of his discourses. Evidently, he means every syllable of that word that entails using the resourcefulness of today to tackle in advance the challenges of tomorrow. And by the sheer passion of commitment to that deeply-rooted development objective, it’s not just Yobe first but, certainly, the ‘Y’ in Yobe is of course not in any way about alphabetical sequence.
•Adamu writes from Damaturu, Yobe State