Nigerijsko zdravstvo

[Master Yoda]

Ovo sam pisao na jednom drugom forumu, pa ne zamerite sto je na engleskom, zaista nemam volje da iz pocetka kucam na Srpskom:
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Some of you know, but in case you don't, I'm based in Nigeria. However, this story coul dhappen anywhere else in tropical regions, and especially in African part of it.

My wife's mother (wife is from the delta of River Niger, near the ocean) fell sick some 3 weeks ago, with symptoms changing from time to time. Sometimes she would feel good, sometimes very bad, with impaired vision, hearing and speech, muscle pain etc.

Each time she would be taken to the hospital, she would be diagnosed (which was correct) with high blood pressure, and high sugar levels.

For well over 3 weeks she was suffering from strong headaches, muscle pains, vomitting, sometimes she could not walk at all, and most recently, she was so sick she could not see anything, or hear, and she could not talk.

Onone of the days she spent in the hospital, nurses FORGOT to give her any of the medicines prescribed by the doctor. Hospital is a state-run hospital. On wednesday, she was feeling better, but for some unknown reason doctor demanded a CAT scan, so they did it. He said the results are ok, with only a small abnormality in the neck area. What followed is for now unknown to me, but at some point that day she was diagnosed with meningitis, and her son had to go and buy medicines prescribed by the doctor (here, most of the time, they just prescribe the medicines and it is up to the patient and his or her family to find them, sadly). When she was given the medicines, her helth started to deteriorate rapidly, and some 4 hours later she was pronounced dead.

After some research, I have found the following page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningitis

which describes exactly what was happening to the poor woman, up to the very last symptom she had. If I as someone who is into computers and not medicine could see it (but see it now when it is way too late), why the doctors, paid to know it and to do something about it did not do anything? Were they simply lazy, ignorant, incompetent, or simply did not care about the human life? Now, to me it seem very obvious. One of the thing said on that wikipedia page is that this part of Africa (including, but not limited to, Nigeria and Sudan too), is so called Meningitis Belt, which means that it is to be EXPECTED that you will have large number of patients with symptoms of meningitis, so you HAVE to check for symptoms and run certain tests. And if youo are not technically capable of doing that, at least as a doctor and as a human being, you should tell that to the family so that they can try somewhere else. If we knew all that at the time she fell sick, she would be in the best hospital in Europe I could afford. And she WOULD be alive today, I guarantee it.

Heavens... Nigeria is a country with soo much oil, back in 2002 Nigeria was on, I think, 7th place worldwide by the export of crude oil, and even the population is slowly approachinng 180 million, with all that money this place could be like another Kuwait... but politicians are busy spending money on themselves and themselves ONLY. Schools are crap, hospitals are crap, roads are crap, streets and bush are full of armed gangsters, all that because of corruption on highest levels.

These days, politicians are preparing for elections in 2011... So, posters, billboards and slogans are all over the place. One of the candidates for the governor of one of the states says: Bringing xxxxx state to the whole new level.

WTF? What is this *&^%&%^&%^^& (put the worst insult you can come up with) talking about? What new level when people die for no good reason? I wish him and all people like him to fall seriously sick, and to have to rely on local medical facilities. But noooo... when rich politicians here fall sick, they seek help in Europe, Middle East etc.

What I think that should be done with politicians? Well, I can't really say, because I would then have to cross the line of good behaviour and say things I should not.

thanks for reading.

[Afrikanka]

Strasno

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