The irony is that while the nation ' s health sector deteriorated abysmally in the last 8 years our rulers get adequate medical attention overseas as Nigerians are left to their fate at home in spite of huge revenue accrued from the sale of crude oil which is unprecedented in the history of the country. At a time when the Federal Government is evidently desperate for an enhanced image abroad, it is a shame that it has failed to strive for functional and dependable health facilities at home, as well as contentment amongst the citizenry. No one should lose sight of the flipside of the unabating medical treatment by top government officials in foreign hospitals. It exposes to the outside world the soft underbelly of the Nigerian state; and no amount of white- wishing can erase the negative perception in the minds of outsiders.

The Federal government, by its apparent non-committal stance on the crisis of the health sector, has displayed a most reprehensible disconnect with the populace for whom the health sector is intended to serve. Even, resident doctors, across the country recently called off their warning strike not because their demands were met by Government but because of their sympathy for patients and response to public opinion. These recurring failings of the authorities and the resultant crises plaguing the sector dramatise a level of insensitivity irreconcilable with the essence of government. We believe that no one in the Health Ministry and the Presidency underestimates the disappointments of the populace, especially when public functionaries are known to undertake trips abroad for medical check-ups and treatments. For it is becoming increasingly embarrassing how public officials in Nigeria, their spouses, children and even siblings, fly abroad for medical treatment.

With the commonest ailments such as headache, mild fever, diabetes, etcetera, our government officials and members of their families would see reason to travel abroad for medical attention. This, we think, is the beginning of the barrenness of the health sector and the concomitant neglect of the medical needs of Nigerians especially the poor and down trodden. Time there was when teaching hospitals in Nigeria held a strong attraction. In fact, up till the mid 1970s, Nigerian teaching hospitals were amongst the best in the world. Even the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, was rated number four in the whole of the Commonwealth. That was when the teaching hospitals were referred to as "centres of excellence." Not anymore! Following the advent of military politicians and political soldiers at the centre stage of our body politics, our health sector, like any other aspect of our public life, became soulless. And all the things which our public health centres once possessed are now atrophying or are decaying. Almost all the teaching hospital are desolate versions of their old selves.

Even the theatres are now rooms where deaths are confirmed and death certificates issued. The affection which the health sector once held, even for the better healed, has evaporated. In the place of a pride in our teaching hospitals, is now at best a sense of indifference and complacency. They are now centres of embarrassment. There, are indeed, several incidents which have conspired to pose a blot on the chequered existence of the Nigerian health sector. Equipment are no longer functioning or non-existent while staff are no longer dedicated to their duties as atmosphere is not very friendly.In many words, health officials have to work without vital equipment, drug trolleys and materials. Patients are required to buy their own drugs, plasters, syringes and dressings. Whenever the hospital provides one dressing pack is used for two patients instead of one. If the atmosphere in the wards is not conducive, the specialized services for which the teaching hospitals used to be known, too, have become virtually non-existent.

For instance, for more than two decades now, most of the centres have been unable to treat kidney complaints or carry out radio therapy on their patients. This is because the renal dialysis equipment and the radiotherapy machines are out of order. Besides, the preponderance of neglect, Government ' s inhuman economic policies since the Ibrahim Babangida years, have forced health experts out of our shores in search of greener pastures abroad. In the mid-1980s, the first batch of Nigerian experts, having felt the suffocation occasioned by a reduction of their wages to mere pittance as a result of the senseless devaluation of the naira, fled to the United States, Saudi Arabia and other Asian countries for survival. Between 1985 and 1988, three years into Babangida's rule, 260 specialist doctors had fled Nigeria. This included 40 of the nation's orthopedic surgeons. Rather than provide necessary infrastructure in the country and give incentives that would attract these experts back to the country, Government has been paying lipservice to the issue.

It is a shame that a country whose first medical doctor (Oguntolu Sapara-Williams) graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1897, 110 years ago, cannot still provide for its citizens ' medical needs. We recall that a few years ago when the wife of the British Prime Minister, Mrs. Blair, was to have her last baby, she was delivered in the ward of a public hospital shared with three other women including the wife of a trade driver. Given our rulers ' penchant for medical trips abroad, we ask: Where have all the 8 years of reform gone? Why is the gulf between the governing elite and the ruled so diabolically wide? Even as it has become evident that when our rulers are in real health crisis, some of them die abroad thereby incurring very high cost in terms of hospital bills and air transport of their remains back home, our leaders have refused to learn. A nation that can pay $12 billion to its creditors and with foreign reserve totaling over $40 billion while social infrastructure and the health sector remain barren, is a nation living in borrowed times. (Culled from daily independent of March 27th 2007).