By Henry Uche
Chief medical director of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Professor Christopher Bode, has called for a dedicated hospital for children in the country as well as investment in the surgical care of children, to secure the future of Nigeria.
The don, who made this call at his inaugural lecture held recently at University of Lagos, also emphasised the need for training health workers amid proper management and administration for maximum results.
While telling the story of his sojourn in the medical profession, the professor of surgery said, “There is need to promote the training of frontline healthcare workers on the early recognition and proper handling of paediatric surgical emergencies to improve on our surgical outcomes in this group.
“Investment in the surgical care of children is a wise choice to ensure a healthy future for our country. Children’s health should not be an afterthought to be grafted on the plan for adults. Nigeria needs children-specific hospitals, which are fully dedicated to the care of our little ones. Surgical facilities in such centres will save the lives of many who have been denied access to and delayed surgical care in our few overburdened centres now.”
According to him, the country must decide who pays for Healthcare, noting that Healthcare remains a goldmine for investors if properly configured. “Universal coverage by the National Health Insurance Service with appropriate price structure that ensures fair pay for work done by Hospitals will allow Nigeria to retain its healthcare workforce and improve the facilities to international Standards. Government will have ample tax returns from this sector.
“Our nation must continue to invest in the training of specialists in the various speciaities of surgery and plan to absorb and nurture those we produce, rather than allow them to be lured out by richer nations which can pay more.”
Bode charged the government to boldly deregulate the funding of public University Education and limit its roles to overall policy formulation, giving grants to institutions, awarding scholarships, bursary and loans to students while enabling public educational institutions to charge fair tuition for good training.
He decried the plethora of interest groups in the country, saying, “There is too much unionism in our tertiary institutions and our Unions are still using 1970 Marxist Ideologies to dictate how schools should run. We still refer to ourselves as “Comrades” in 2022. Our unions should think out of the box and stop holding the educational and health sectors back from growing. Nothing good is free, especially in this unapologetic era of global capitalism.
“Our universities should wean themselves from government handouts and meaningfully interact with the town, industries and grants authorities for better, healthier funding. Productivity in our universities should mean more than a secure tenure while society waits for game changing leadership from the ivory tower.”
While taking the audience through his achievements in the medical world, he reiterated that his mandates were: Service, Training and Research, and would not rest on his hesitate to deliver to the fullest on his calling.
“This is what we were called to do; when others wants to run, we must be there to give service so others may live, and for me that is the most sublime reason to be a doctor, to be a health care worker,” he stressed.