When you tolerate inadequacies, you will always be blamed for inadequacies – Anonymous.
Last week Thursday was indeed a sad day for the University of Ibadan when the news of the death of Mayowa Alaran, a 200 level of the Department of Human Kinetics, filtered in. It was reported that Mayowa had died in the University Health Centre, also known as Jaja Clinic, the previous evening after being rushed there when he slumped while watching a football match.
The circumstances surrounding his death brought to fore, once again, the harshness and mediocrity Jaja Clinic has been known for. Reports had it that staff on duty on the night Mayowa died made the fatal decision that a perfunctory Clinic Card was more important than the attention Mayowa was desperately in need of. In asking for unnecessary, they made death a necessity for Mayowa.
But again, that was not Jaja Clinic’s first case of ineptitude. Cases abound of its staff gossiping away while a patient was writhing in pain in front of them, asking of a parent’s number before they could treat a patient, administering wrong treatment which required having to go for retreatment, rejecting a patient because he was not a member of the University Community and other shocking cases all account for the incompetence unbecoming of professionals who swore to life first.
“The system is failing them too.” “It is the system that is projecting them as inefficient.” Their sympathisers proclaim. But, they seem not to realise that silence is the most perfect expression of acquiescence. Rarely do you see Jaja Clinic’s workers embark on a strike in protest of non-availability of facilities which would make them work effectively and efficiently. Instead, they only down tools for non-payment of their wages and salaries. As entitled as they are to do this, it speaks volume of their self-centredness and indifference to sufficient and adequate facilities for good delivery of service.
Perhaps, their sympathisers would even blame the system for the uncaring personal conducts of most of, if not all, their staff to patients. Many of them behave as if they got trained in an ‘Iya Ibeji Abiwere Hospital’ and not a standard medical training institution. They have turned the Hippocratic oath into a hypocrite’s curse. They appear medical on the outside but their demeanours to patients are cynical and one wonders if they were driven into medicine by a social conscience or by mere curiousity.
While the protests embarked upon by students in the wake of Mayowa’s death, in some cases, appeared exaggerated and unruly, the students’ action was like a purge of pent-up anger and frustration against Jaja’s recurring inefficiency and all the bashings it has been receiving are very justifiable.
I am going to rest this argument by drawing this analogy: A student’s room in his hall of residence is leaking and destroying his valuable including his handouts which will make him pass his tests. Yet, he fails to report the leak to his hall supervisor and fails his tests and of course, gets severely reprimanded for it. Who shall be blamed? The student or the hall supervisor? This is the case with Jaja Clinic. The student is Jaja Clinic’s staff and the hall supervisor is the system which sympathisers would blame for incompetence.
To me, reasons and situation of things say the blame should go to Jaja Clinic’s staff.
I rest my case.
/dzaenit/
