A medical practitioner, Dr Abib Olamitoye, on Tuesday in Ibadan urged hospitals in Nigeria to prioritise the treatment of gunshot and robbery victims before requesting police reports.
Olamitoye, who is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ibadan Central Hospital, said many lives had been lost due to delays caused by insistence on clearance from the police before treatment.
He emphasised that saving lives must remain the first responsibility of medical professionals in such emergencies.
He advised that medical facilities should establish working relationships with police divisions within their areas of operation and keep official contact numbers readily available for emergencies.
He explained that if a victim or relative cannot provide a police report during treatment, the hospital should reach out to the police since the patient would already be under medical care and unable to escape.
“The patient must be kept alive first, then we can now talk about police report, price, hospital card and other necessary things,” he said.
On the subject of medical tourism, Olamitoye maintained that Nigerian-trained doctors are competent and in many cases capable of outperforming their foreign counterparts if provided with adequate infrastructure and favourable working conditions.
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He noted that several Nigerian doctors had successfully handled complex medical cases with improvised equipment in challenging environments.
He urged the government to address the decay in infrastructure, poor welfare packages, and the high cost of medical training in Nigeria, which he described as major drivers of brain drain in the sector.
Recalling his time as a student at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, he noted that stable electricity and water supply were guaranteed then, unlike the present situation.
“The medical tourism is not as a result of lack of competent hands, but due to decayed infrastructure and other issues.
We need urgent attention to issues of doctors’ welfare packages, as they spend longer years to study.
They need to feed their families and meet up with other responsibilities.
Foreign countries put more value on Nigerian doctors and that is why they excel when they get the right equipment and good environment to work over there,” Olamitoye said.
NAN
