Who Will Sell Me and My Mother Country Their Ventilators? _Dr Loretta Ogboro-Okor

Once upon a time, about 4 years ago, a young man left the United Kingdom for Nigeria.

He came onto the Nigerian healthcare space, having acquired the zenith of training that can be earned in his area of medical specialisation.

To his immediate UK medical community, they could not (for their own perceived and obvious reasons) understand why this man was leaving their locale back to Nigeria.

To the Nigerians and even some of his family members, they wonder about his sanity and why he makes the sacrifice he does for his fatherland till this day.

However, at this covid 19 times, something strikes me about his message on his return. What made his return interesting is that he went on an awareness drive. One I could say, never before done by a single man in the medical community in Nigeria. Some medical colleagues frowned at it …..(hopefully, they are still frowning or are they?).

*His awareness drive centered around VENTILATORS AND CRITICAL CARE CAPACITY OF OUR HEALTHCARE SPACE IN NIGERIA and the lack thereof.*

He pleaded, he shouted, he begged he even cried on some nights all by himself….asking why our country had very poor critical care facilities despite all our *dormant* wealth.🙏🏿

He kept pushing for the hospitals he worked in to get standard and mobile ventilators. He begged for hospital managements he came in contact with, to invest in standard and mobile ventilators.

He came into major altercations with many an Anaesthetist and ICU care providers because in his opinion, together with them as the leads, we had games to step up, to save Nigerian lives. Like a lone voice in the wilderness of our Nigerian healthcare space, he wailed and still wails

*Today, the first day of April 2020, VENTILATORS and CRITICAL CARE CAPACITY top every single healthcare chart and chat in not just Nigeria but our world.*

I watch the knee jerk response of donations from our rich and our politicians…I watch how now when we have no where to escape to, we now see what some people saw years ago.

You see, healthcare has never really taken the centre stage it deserves in our Nation and Nationhood as Nigerians. Successive governments and even our own people have somehow neglected our ourselves at our own peril.

Maybe because Douglas Emeka Okor (the CNS) is a Neurosurgeon, who is used to managing critically ill patients; our lack of ventilators and proper critical care was the first thing to hit him like a tornado on his return home.

He keeps preaching how Nigerian patients who do not need to die are dying because of lack of proper critical care facilities and properly trained critical care staff that most importantly, must work as a life saving team where all are respected.

Covid 19 may not be all that bad afterall…if we can all take this as a wake up call and the stimulus to empower our health awareness, health seeking behaviour as individuals and healthcare policy formulations as managers, influencers, politicians etc.

I watch as State Governors and Policy makers in Nigeria make announcements on how many ventilators they have ordered and I am worried.

Oh…yes, I am worried. I worry that these may be castles in the air while I feverently pray that they are not. I worry because only yesterday, a government official opened up to me on how they are experiencing difficulties getting the deliveries of ventilators ordered.

I worry because in the current world scramble for ventilators; where hoover and fan production companies like Dyson as well as car manufacturers are now diversifying to producing ventilators to sustain their own nations’ demands, who will sell me and my country ventilators??🤔🤔. I wonder as I pray!

I read where Innoson our indigenous car manufacturer in Nigeria offered to manufacture ventilators…..I do not see any obvious exploration of this option by our leadership….maybe they are…maybe I just missed it.🤷🏿‍♀

Should we not have listened all these years to the CNS as he and many before him begged our leaders to take our health care sector in Nigeria seriously?

Who will sell me and my mother country ventilators?

I ponder……we do need them and we need them real fast. We also do not just need them in announcements or on paper…we need them real quick as we do all other relevant healthcare equipments and especially personal protective equipments for all cadre of healthcare provision team because like the CNS says, our Nigerian Patients Are Worth It.