As the doctor in charge of Healing Stripes Hospital (HSH), Lagos, it is the duty of Dr. Ezinne Onyemere to ensure that patients with chronic kidney disease have access to the hospital’s dialysis support scheme. Through this scheme, the hospital, owned by Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) and financed through its His Love Foundation, recently won the Outstanding CSR of the Year award.
In this interview with GLORIA IKEGBULE, Onyemere gives an overview of the Nigerian health sector, her perspective of how to raise the standard of health care and also how ignorance has fuelled the increase in renal diseases in contemporary Nigerian society. Excerpts:
At the sixth edition of the Nigerian Health Care Excellence Award 2019, HSH was honoured with Outstanding CSR of the Year award. How did that come about?
We set out with the goal to alleviate the cost burden of dialysis and help chronic kidney patients save for renal transplant; we are glad that the scheme is beginning to get noticed. The Dialysis Support Scheme, offering free dialysis to the less privileged, has been running for the past four years. We are really excited that we are gradually reaching our goal and we are willing to affect more lives. It shows that whatever you put your mind to do is possible, regardless.
Health care is a complex system and, if you are determined, you can make a noticeable impact, especially in our environment. The Dialysis Support Scheme, which is the reason we won the award, came through people choosing to come together and help.
What does this award mean to you?
It means so much because it is an encouragement that our little steps are in the right direction. There are so many people with chronic renal disease who are unable to have access to care due to cost. Yes, there are more dialysis centres being set up, but these patients cannot afford the care. Each session costs between N25,000 and N35,000. Imagine an individual having to do that three times a week from his monthly earnings. Some can’t cope and they die. There is some imbalance. The costs of consumables are high, as they are being imported.
We have the platform of being a faith-based organisation, where we could reach out to people and those passionate about health care come up to assist these people to get their dialysis done.
What is your impression of medical care in Nigeria?
My impression, truth be told, is neglect. We have all it takes to offer the best, but we just chose to ignore the bad state of our health care system. If we, as a nation, focus to make our health system work, we will be able to offer Nigerians the best of care, which will be at par or even better than what they currently get from medical tourism.
Is the church capable of shouldering the responsibility of health care?
The church does not have all it takes; but the church has put a foot forward to make everybody know that it is possible to close these gaps in the system, no matter how small. We are not leaving it for the government alone to do. Imagine every church trying to make sure that people have access to health care. If you use your platform to get someone to donate for health care and then make services free, it gives access to someone down the line. The church is stepping out to partner with government to close the gaps in health care delivery.
There are more people in need of the service than you can accommodate. How do you identify patients that really require help in the Dialysis Support Scheme?
We do some profiling to choose patients on the scheme so that we do not run the risk of everyone just coming in, including those that can afford it. Profiling checks patient’s status, to ascertain if the patient truly could pay or not. Meanwhile, the patient would have been in our system, having done dialysis for at least four weeks. This timeframe enables us to interact with the patient and conduct background checks to determine if the person is indigent, and based on our parameters, determine if he or she truly requires support.
How do you react to concerns of patients of other faiths who are wont to think they would not get the service because they are not Christian?
There is no segregation in this hospital. It is called Healing Stripes Hospital, not Healing Stripes Christian Hospital. It is owned by the Redeemed Christian Church of God, but we offer services to everyone, irrespective of your religion or ethnicity.
What is your assessment of quality health care in the country?
Quality comes with funding. We are capable of quality health care, if we are well funded. We know we have the problem of health care being under-budgeted; the good thing about our situation, however, is that now Nigerians are more enlightened and are beginning to speak up. This also will put pressure on the leadership to pay attention to what is important.
People travel abroad for medical care because they do not believe in the safety and quality of our health system. If things change from the top and they get the right care here at home, there will be no need to travel.
But many Nigerian, including the President, travel abroad for medical care…
What that does to the system is further neglect. With this issue of medical tourism, we will never get the system to work. The day the President decides that he must get all his care here in Nigeria, he would have a firsthand experience of what the issues are, and he would be obliged to mobilise all that is required, and the problem would be fixed.
If you were the health minister, what would be your recommendation, knowing all the challenges in the health system?
My recommendation would be to take a critical look at our system and create a system that would work for us as a country; have a sustainability plan for both structure and personnel, and correct how our system works, from generating personnel to maintaining the facilities, from making sure that services are available and accessible to ensuring that the system is well-funded.
It is not enough to say, doctors go on strike, there is reason for the strike, fix it. It is not just an isolated issue of poor funding; why is there poor funding? It is not an isolated issue of machine maintenance and the bureaucracy of changing them; it is in questioning why the bureaucracy is there in the process.
Because of this lack of access, many Nigerians resort to self-medication…
No matter how minimal the service here in Nigeria is, you have to use it first. The health centre may not have all that is required to function well, but you must visit the health centre when you are ill, if you cannot afford the expensive private clinics. When you look at the rise in renal disease, it is still due (in part) to indiscriminate self-medication. Government has provided health centres; no matter how non-functional you might think they are, if you got a prescription and the right dose to take, it is better than self-care. Poor access does not mean no access.
Really, you have this health centres and you do not pay so much. I would blame lack of awareness for this trend, because I don’t think they know the danger self-care poses. People can get affordable health care within their vicinity instead of self-medicating.
What are the services rendered at HSH?
Our goal is to offer preventive care and quality care to everyone. We render out-patient services (about 80 per cent of what we do), in-patient services, dialysis, apheresis and surgical services.