Buhari’s Medical Vacation Abroad Stirs Outrage

In one sentence, it commended a statement that disclosed the President’s medical condition-persistent ear infection-as a “departure from the past”.

In the next, it said Buhari’s trip abroad “flies in the face of the Federal Government’s earlier declaration of resolve to halt the embarrassing phenomenon of outward medical tourism.”

The President left June 6 on a 10-day medical vacation, during which he is billed to see an ear-nose-and-throat specialist, after an ENT specialist and his own physician recommended it.

READ HERE: Buhari’s Ear Infection Worsens, Travels To UK For Urgent Treatment

CMA vice president Dr Osahon Enabulele has for long called for the President to show leadership by example in patronising local expertise and health facilities, and have the entire Federal Executive Council follow suit.

Enabulele, a former president of the Nigerian Medical Association, said incessant medical trips by public office holders using public funds was an abuse of taxpayer money.

By the trip which comes in the midst of the “change” campaign, Enabulele said, Buhari has lost “a golden opportunity to assert his change mantra through a clear demonstration of leadership by example, by staying back to receive medical treatment in Nigeria and thereby inspiring confidence in Nigeria’s health sector which currently boasts of medical experts that favourably compare with medical experts anywhere in the world, if not even better.”

“I consider it a national shame of immense proportions that Mr. President had to be recommended for foreign medical care/re-evaluation despite the presence of over 250 ENT specialists (and professors) in Nigeria, as well as a National Ear Centre located in Kaduna state.

He suggested options the President’s physicians could have explored, staying back

· urgently invite a consortium of Nigerian trained ENT specialists in Nigeria to Abuja to re-evaluate and treat Mr. President; or

· if it is determined that the medical expertise is not available in Nigeria (and I doubt this), any identified Nigerian trained ENT specialist practicing anywhere in the world should be invited to Abuja, Nigeria, for the sole purpose of re-evaluating and treating Mr. President; or

· if it is a case where the health facilities/equipment are unavailable (and this is a possibility) then Mr. President should have used his current medical situation, though unfortunate, to commence the Federal Government’s plan to re-equip Nigerian hospitals with modern state-of-the art health facilities, by ordering for the needed medical equipment to enable the locally available Nigerian trained ENT specialists to attend to him, and thereafter use same facilities to attend to other Nigerians with similar conditions.

Home and away

“It is on record that most public and political office holders who seek foreign medical care abroad are handled by Nigerian trained doctors in foreign lands (particularly in the United Kingdom which has over 3000 Nigerian trained medical doctors, United States of America with over 5000 Nigerian trained medical doctors, amongst other foreign countries), most of whom left the shores of Nigeria on account of government’s perennial failure to address the various push and pull factors which have consistently driven this yearly brain drain phenomenon in Nigeria.

Enabulele said Buhari’s staying back would have been a “win-win” situation for Nigeria.

“Mr. President will not only get managed with the imported medical facilities and expertise (if indeed needed); he would save Nigeria (currently going through a socio-economic turmoil) the capital flight that would result from his planned foreign medical trip,” he explained.

“If the former Governor of Kogi State, His Excellency, Capt. Ichalla Idris Wada, could patronize Nigerian trained medical experts and medical facilities here in Nigeria when he unfortunately suffered a fractured femur following a fatal road traffic accident in 2013, I see no reason why in 2016 Mr. President could not have stayed back in Nigeria to attend to his ear infection,” Enabulele said, noting he himself underwent an ENT intervention this April.

“Mr. President should act now to remove this tragic blot on our collective professional and national image by returning home to receive medical care in Nigeria.”

“Doing otherwise will send a strong negative signal to majority of toiling Nigerians who either have no means to seek healthcare services or daily indulge in catastrophic health expenditures, talk less of dreaming of traveling abroad for medical treatment.”