 Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill once said, healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have. Guys, welcome to the Advocate. Today, we're going to be sharing with you thought-provoking topics as usual. It's going to be an exciting conversation. We basically call a spade by its name. Guess what? The deployable state of Nigerian's healthcare system is at the top of our list. And I'll be sharing with you some thoughts on what I think a Nigerian life should mean. We're also going to be taking a look at unemployment crisis in Nigeria. And just imagine the number of unemployed people today. Uche will be here to share thoughts on that. Toye will be advocating for the representation of Nigerian and African books. And finally, our very own friend Kunle Lawal would open up a can of worms. And guess what? Middle-class circumverts the Nigerian democracy is going to be his topic. Guys, sit back. After this break, we'll be back to dissect this topic. Stay with us. My story is about the story of a young girl, Anastasia Okocha, a 15-year-old girl who was standing in front of her house when she was run over by a drunk Okada driver. A drunk Okada driver. Now, after excessive delay, she was finally taken to the hospital. By the time they arrived at Lute, it was 48 hours after. And guess what? Her family faced a grim reality. They lost her on Sunday, 21st, 2001. When they arrived Lute, a lot of things unfolded. First of all, there was a lack of beds. The syringes and the glows and everything else that you had to use in hospital. The family was asked to pay for them. Imagine buying the syringe your daughter would be used. But guess what? Everything they spoke about mirrored an extortion than a healthcare facility. And this is the reality of many Nigerians. The story of the coaches is one that reminds us of every Nigerian is one crisis away from death. The state of healthcare in Nigeria is very deplorable. About 3.2 million out of the 200 million Nigerians today are covered under the national health insurance scheme. Just imagine that number far less than 10%. Access to quality health is still a nightmare for many Nigerians. While our educated officials have the luxury of student wealth to fly abroad for expensive medical treatments, our underfunded healthcare sector continues to decay. Now, with health sector only receiving 4.6% of our national budgets every year. You can imagine, if you break it down, that's somewhere around 2.9 billion is allocated to medical care every year in Nigeria, with a population of 70% under 35. Countless efforts have been made by the African Union and the World Health Organization and many others to persuade the federal government to increase healthcare budgets. But yet nothing has been done. What has it cost to put a primary healthcare center in every local government? What has it cost to put a special hospital in every sanitary district? The lives of our people have to matter. Quality healthcare is not just a benefit reserved for the privileged few, but rather a fundamental right for every Nigerian and every citizen. We therefore urge the Nigerian government to emulate its foreign counterparts and make concerted efforts to offer comprehensive universal healthcare to its citizens. We also cannot forget to hold accountable the custodians of our healthcare sector, to our doctors and our nurses. We urge you to remember the sanctity of your profession and the fact that you hold someone's life in your hands. The level of dedication and diligence that you show is very important to determine life or death. For a healthcare professional in any capacity to lose empathy is to undermine the very virtue upon which your profession is built. Medicine without empathy is no medicine at all. Every healthcare worker who owes you owe your patients a duty of care and if the quality of service given falls below the standard of care, it amounts to a medical negligence that can also be persecuted. But if we continue to undermine the lives of our people, we are going to be breaking the act of 2004 medical and dental practitioners and it has been passed into law. We cannot continue to ignore the rising polls of avoidable deaths in the stravestical healthcare sector. Remember the lady that we lost her to, I think, Prime Medical Center the other time? Remember the other guy that was rushed to hospital and they asked him to get a police report and he passed before they could get one? Why would you delay a victim to healthcare because you need a police report? I mean, put him on the chain, he's not running away. However, we can, for the protection of the lives of every Nigerian child, continue to advocate that we have to make healthcare work in this country. The lives of Nigerians are not ours to waste, it's ours to protect. I open the floor. Well, Fadi, one of the key things I find interesting was when COVID occurred and our VIPs couldn't leave the country again. So, COVID was kind of like a blessing or a pointer for us to decide to look into our health sector and start to ask the real questions. We lost some VIPs on the way during COVID, not like we do not commiserate with the families, but it put them in the exact position the common man in Nigeria has had to face. But then it's ironic because we missed the perfect opportunity to fix the healthcare sector at that time. A lot of the states, we saw pictures of many of the states who were put in tents when they could have used that as a chance to roll out community healthcare centres or even one super mega hospital in these locations and in these regions. So, it leads me to wonder what exactly is the problem? Is it the lack of funding? Is it just the strategic outlook on how these things are supposed to be done or is it that we've just lost our conscience completely? Well, I think I can speak to it in that I have a child with a medical condition. So, I deal with the healthcare system on a weekly basis in Nigeria and recently I've had to deal with the public healthcare system due to her diagnosis and due to the fact that the best endocrinologist in Africa consults at Luther. And it's a daunting experience. It's a depressing experience. As the first time that we went, the first week that we went, we were literally all in tears when we left. So, you know, there's two ways you can look at it, right? In that, yes, healthcare professionals are maybe neglecting their role. But they're also existing within a structure that is not set up for them to succeed. So, there are people there who really want to do their job, but they don't have the ability to do it. So, let me set an example. We are due to go to Luth to sleep over. I told them, I'm not going to sleep over. There's no way. We have transport. We'll get there as early as we need to get there. Because there was... In one of our visits, I lost my way. Luth is massive and ended up entering the ward, the general ward. And I wept at what I was seeing. Like, leakages, just filth. I mean, people on top of each other and it was terrible. And then I got the report saying, okay, we're going to be sleeping over. This is what we need. I need to go to the lab and pick up the tubes, pick up the injections. I need to go to the pharmacy, go and get the drug that they're going to inject her with. And I was confused. I'm like, what do you mean? Because me, I'm coming from private healthcare. What do you mean? I have to go and do those things. Oh, yes, because we don't have those things here. And you have to buy them? You have to buy them. We spent two days looking for the drug. I called pharmacists. I knew I called so many pharmacists. I called everywhere. And I had anxiety in my throat for like two days. So just imagine someone who doesn't have any other choice. My friend who lost her sister said, my sister did not die from the accident. She died from negligence. If the response had been quick enough, she would have survived. So just imagine and then they had money, even at the end of the day, before they could take her to the mall, they had to pay. At every point in time, it was about bills, bills, bills, bills, bills. Just imagine that not very many Nigerians can afford three square meals and you're not having to pay exorbitant bills. We understand that the private hospitals are also there to make profits as well as to run. But I think when there is a medical emergency and there has to be a way that they have to put the life of the person above, pay for your card, pay for this, those things can happen along the line. And I really want to see persecution if you ask me. Negligence, criminal negligence is something we've taken to another level. Medicine is something you have to look for and have hope. And people go to hospital and they don't come back. You could go for headache and you're dead, right? Because somewhere along the line, someone is exploiting the gaps. We know corruption is there. You spoke about corruption, you spoke about the negligence and most people were even good at running away. We're talking about people living in the country. A lot of Nigerians are living in a country that are going abroad. Canada has benefited immensely from our healthcare, our doctors. Saudi Arabia has also benefited. And the Minister of Labour said it's okay for doctors to live because there is still enough here for us, but that's not the way to process this. To lose your talent, to lose talented people, whether they are doctors or not, is to have a brain drain. And the quality of development of every economy is dependent on the quality of the minds that is driving the economy. If you lose the best talent, regardless of where we're going, it's a global world and the competition is global. You would have to suffer for it. So we have to make medicine attractive. We have to treat our doctors right. I'm also advocating for pay review if that's what's going to take. I don't even know if reform is the word we must use. We use reform and reform has lost its meaning. But I really think there is a drastic and urgent need for us to strip it down, build it up, whatever we need to do. It needs to be done fast. We don't know who is next. But Ferdi, you know, you get the real position of a country when the country actually decides to only spend 4.16 of its entire budget on health. It has told you clearly that it is not... That's more than what they spend on renovation of their national assembly. I was going to ask what are the comparisons... Less than. Was it raining inside? Less than. And the man was complaining that it's raining because they've not... Refuse to approve that. You know, growing up, I remember local hospitals, you know, when the local government was still functional, under military regime. So I don't understand why during the democracy, we've decided to bring in the national primary health care, development agency, MPH, DCA or whatever the call themselves, to interfere in the local government's autonomy in handling primary health care. In 2019, I was around a bit and I had... I went to a primary health care center, 15 minutes from the center of Abuja. And I got there. I entered a delivery ward and I'm slim. For me, I couldn't stretch out my hand, you know, which is sad. And the only thing they had in their room was iodine and panadol extract. And this is 15 minutes from Abuja. That's the city center. And about three or four minutes drive from the train station. So, Nigeria, well, we hope this talks bring up something. Well, guys, which is next after this break? Stay with us.