The COVID-19 distraction

In the last one month, it has been tales of agony, pain, and regrets for many people who lost their relatives and loved, not by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic but what the novel virus has triggered off in terms of mismanagement and poor response to public health across the country. For a long time to come, the pandemic would remain a nightmare for humanity considering the sudden affliction, casualty, economic loss, and devastation to the entire world.

Apart from the public awareness campaigns at the national and state levels, health institutions at all levels have become excessively responsive to the pandemic at the detriment of other health concerns suggesting that the pandemic has now become  a distraction. Today, the experience of patients at most private and public health institutions point to outright rejection, especially when they are not showing symptoms of COVID-19. Public hospitals across the country appear to be apparently guilty of this professional misconduct by telling sick countrymen to look elsewhere for treatment on the grounds that their facilities are being reserved for coronavirus patients!

This misplaced priority has led to the death of many innocent Nigerians since the index case of coronavirus was recorded in the country, last February. Initially, private hospitals were prevented from treating COVID-19 patients for lack of requisite staff including infectious disease specialists that are properly trained in infection prevention protocol and equipment to handle the disease. The affected hospitals had to suspend their operations to decontaminate facilities and adhere to other guidelines stipulated by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

The code of medical ethics in Nigeria provides for the duty of care whereby a doctor may be liable for failure to attend or treat a patient promptly, just as much as for careless treatment. Medical negligence can occur due to the failure to diagnose on time, failure to attend to patients promptly, and incompetence in the assessment of   patients. It is rather unfortunate that in this country, we have the habit of religiously focusing all our attention on one issue at the detriment of other important matters. No doubt, COVID-19 is deadly and demands an urgent response. However, tackling the pandemic should not be done at the expense of serious diseases. On a regular basis, many people are dying of cancer, malaria fever, tuberculosis, and hepatitis, to mention a few.

The experiences of the sick victims range from hostilities of hospital staff, reluctance to admit them on the flimsy excuse that there were no empty beds, compulsory subjection to COVID-19 test without showing any symptoms, and outright bias. Patients having health conditions such as malaria fever manifest symptoms similar to COVID-19. This confusion often becomes worse by subjecting patients to coronavirus testing before being ever attended to. This development could encourage sick patients to hide the real nature of their illness by invariably contributing to the deterioration state of health of the people. Hardly do people respond to treatment after being subjected to such trauma at public hospitals. 

Recently, the federal government raised an alarm on the likelihood of “unnecessary deaths” because hospitals were turning back non-COVID-19 related patients. The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman, Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Mr. Boss Mustapha, disclosed that PTF had noticed a marked reduction in the delivery of non-COVID-19 related services to hospitals. He charged health service providers to help relieve the burden of diseases by offering the required services.

To prevent more deaths and casualties across the country, the government should come in hard and put a stop to this practice of hospitals rejecting sick people. Health authorities should realise that what determines how successful they are cannot be measured solely on the number of COVID-19 patients they were able to identify and attend to but rather in their ability to manage all manners of ailments and sick people. There is a need for reorientation on the part of our health workers to know that coronavirus is not a death sentence as it would come and go. To ensure that COVID-19 distraction does not continue, there is the imperative for a periodic visitation and monitoring of health institutions and hospitals across the country by joint teams from the ministries of health, NCDC, and the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), among other stakeholders.

Health personnel found engaging in unethical rejection of the sick should be sanctioned and heavily fined while their facilities should either be closed down or in line with extant regulations. More private hospitals should be granted permission to treat cases to reduce the pressure on governmental hospitals. Health workers should be adequately protected and remunerated in view of the risks, and hazards trailing their work. Already, the incursion of the virus has taken its heavy toll on the people considering the sudden deaths, losses to businesses, forced confinement and inability to interact socially despite the fact that many Africans like to socialise. Hunger and overzealous security personnel are also compounding the problems and breeding a dangerous trend that kills more and faster than COVID-19. This distraction must end.  

Leave a Reply