New Age Editorial
The death of 29-year old Elizabeth Ese Alabi in Cambridgeshire, Britain, after being denied urgent medical attention has again brought to the fore Nigeria’s enduring healthcare crisis. Ms Alabi had travelled to Britain in September 2005 on a visitor’s visa and gave birth to a set of twins in January 2006. Almost immediately after, she developed a heart condition in which her heart muscle became expanded (dilated cardiomyopathy) thereby endangering her life and making it impossible for her to take care of the twins.
Unfortunately, Ms Alabi’s visa not only expired in March in the midst of her heart troubles, last year, British health ministry enacted a rule excluding so-called “health tourists” from enjoying free medical care in public hospitals. It therefore became impossible for foreigners, who do not have the money, to enjoy the kind of urgent medical attention Ms Alabi required to save her life. The privilege is reserved for British citizens and citizens of 24 other European Union member states.
While the clock of her failing heart ticked towards zero, Ms Alabi battled both to extend her stay and to receive urgent surgery. In the end, though her case evoked passion and generated controversy, she died leaving her twins and a distraught partner, Ade Abiodun, whom she travelled to Britain to meet in the first instance.
Her death may weigh on the conscience of the British Home Office for some time to come, and may even prompt a reassessment of the rules setting out who or who may not enjoy the free-care-for-all National Health Service (NHS) scheme.
Between January 2006 when Ms Alabi took ill and early this May when she died, there was enough time for her to return to Nigeria to receive medical attention. She didn’t, not because it was difficult – she had a return ticket – but because everyone recognises that Nigerian hospitals are poorly equipped, poorly funded and overburdened. Britain, it must be acknowledged, has one of the world’s most sophisticated medical facilities, and so if Ms Alabi couldn’t take advantage of medical care in Britain, where else would she go?
Ms Alabi’s case made headline news while it lasted. It was heartbreaking for many, perhaps including the British Home Office that was reviewing her case and the health ministry that enunciated the rules that barred the Nigerian woman and others like her from receiving treatment. It also captivated many Nigerians who watched agonisingly as Ms Alabi fought hard to save her life but gradually and slowly lost it. Many, no doubt, watched with emotive concern as the 29-year old woman finally, through her lawyers, signified shortly before she died that it was fruitless to continue the case. And then, as in a live tragic drama, she died.
Her painful death diminished the human race quite considerably, British fellow feeling so cruelly, and Nigeria’s inability to take care of her citizens so appallingly.
The British ought to look again at their rules and human feeling and consider whether the hysteria about immigration is not doing incalculable harm to the attributes of humaneness and fairness with which they have long been associated. But more importantly, Nigerian authorities will have to reassess the meaning of nationhood as its citizens are scattered all over the globe, not just as skilled migrant workers, but as economic refugees, and, as the Ms Alabi case showed, as health tourists.
Nigeria appears to be trying to address the health needs of its citizens but the effort is a decidedly poor one with national attention often concentrated on crass irrelevancies and petty preoccupations like a sleight of hand amendment to the constitution while fundamental issues that bear on the well-being of the citizen receive scanty attention. The lesson from the dramatised death of the 29-year-old Nigerian woman is that it is urgent to address the healthcare needs of Nigerians on a comprehensive scale. It is only by so doing that the kind of vicarious humiliation we all felt, as Ms Alabi fought to live and no official Nigerian effort was made to help save her, can be mitigated