Medical terrorists at the door

Nothing gives more pleasure than the fact that one sees through some of these opaque initiatives to hoodwink and continuously keep the masses at bay. The Corona Pandemic more than gave different stakeholder clusters the leverage to exploit and literally skin the people.

They had screamed as loud as their voices could allow them that the virus will take us down, and that we were incapable of keeping the non-pharmaceutical procedures that would give us a fighting chance.

Our poverty-laced lives, it was argued, would not allow us to keep social distances because of the thick density that was our co-habitation and as a result we would most likely be massacred by the ravaging virus that had no cure but was highly lethal.

This time, it didn’t look like God would allow them have their way. The more they screamed, the more our people refused to come down with the virus. The more they shouted, the more the mortality rate refused to climb. In fact, one can safely say that the figures recorded in Nigeria remain paltry compared to what we are getting from the outside world. One hundred and fifty thousand in a country of about 200m?

This, however, did not stop the medical mercenaries. The purveyors of the private medical practice. These ones had since taken advantage of the huge gap in medical delivery in the country and had developed a third wheel that was aimed to bridge the gap. But what do we see? A school of sea-faring pirates who all but scavenge and exploit the innocent.

They build appalling edifices with pretentions of 5-star lodgings, fill them up with less than experienced human capital, and in most cases the proprietor being the only experienced hand. And, hiding under stringent operating environment, they charge ridiculously scandalous prices for delivery that is usually far below the standards of the so called derided public health facilities.

So, charging over N10m for the management of Corona virus and still losing your life and being charged another N6m to retrieve your corpse is an experience in hades. This from my little investigation, I hear, is even the least.

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Some people have spent about N50m while losing their lives in the process.

The sector is beginning to look like a free for all. But truth is that we cannot allow it to continue to be run like an illegal mine field where every sea farer has a concession. This is health, our lives.

With a life expectancy of less than 46, we would only be compounding our problems if we continue to allow these pirates to run riot over the system.

My clarion call today is for every Nigerian who has lost a loved one in these medical casinos to ask for their medical records and move them to a team of expert independent accessors on your way to the Medical Council.

The intervention would most likely throw up any incompetences and expose quacks within the system. The rip-off has to stop.

By: Joseph Edgar…

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Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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