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A Professor of Surgery at the Faculty of Clinical Services, University of Lagos, Prof. Adesoji Ademuyiwa, has called for health insurance coverage to ensure free surgeries for all Nigerian children suffering from congenital anomalies, cancers, and trauma.
Speaking during his inaugural lecture with the theme “Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me: The Surgeries; The Surgeon’s Sojourn in Collaborative Research,” Ademuyiwa emphasised that these conditions are not the children’s fault and can lead to severe financial hardship for their families.
He recalled that surgeons have long advocated for waiving surgery fees for children, arguing that they should not bear the financial burden of their illnesses. He said that there should not be any financial cost for the children because they did not come to the world by themselves, and it was not their fault that they had health challenges.
Ademuyiwa acknowledged the neglect of Nigerian children’s access to surgery and highlighted studies demonstrating the feasibility of performing free primary surgeries for both neonates and adults. He said the one for adults was unpopular, but surgeons had shown it was possible.
“Access to safe surgery and anaesthesia is essential for Nigerian children. We advocate for free surgeries for all children in the best-case scenario and the worstcase scenario; all children with congenital anomalies, cancers and trauma should have health insurance coverage.
These conditions are not due to any fault of the child, and they are heavily impoverishing to parents.” Continuing, he lamented that the surgical workforce in Nigeria is heavily deficient. He said the situation has been worsened in the last few years by the Japa syndrome.
Ademuyiwa called for improvement in order to retain young specialists leaving the country. “There must be improved conditions of service as an immediate stopgap measure. Medium and intermediate interventions will include upgrade of faculties, training and research.
There must be incentives to attract medical graduates to the surgical specialities to be embraced and adopted.” Speaking on the main lessons from the experience gathered and his body of work, said: “There are high-fliers at the University of Lagos. Their hard work and talent must be rewarded.
There should be a dedicated track of progression that such talented individuals could follow for the acceleration of their promotion. “In my case, I met the requirements to be a professor by the standard as at the time I was recruited almost a decade before my promotion was announced.
For those of us in the medical sciences, and by extension to several other faculties, single authorship Is becoming very unlikely. The scoring system must, of necessity, adapt to this reality of change and not punish collaborative research. “As I have shown, collaborative research can pool resources — both human and material to achieve tremendous impact.
As such, the scoring system should not be punitive but inductive to collaborative research.” On how possible his recommendations were, he was confident that all recommendations were doable as the cost involved is small compared to some of the budgets being announced by the government on other things on a daily basis.
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