The Gambia health sector needs more improvement, in both the public and private health institutions/facilities. More efforts should be done to cut down on overseas treatment for our people. There is a need to develop our own health system by getting more specialised Gambian doctors. For instance, Gambians can be sent abroad for more professional training, and current Gambian professionals abroad encouraged to come home to serve. At the same time, we should also embrace more foreign doctors through bilateral cooperation to fill the gap in our health sector.
Mr President, good and quality medicines should be procured and stocked in the health facilities across the country. All hospitals across the country, especially Serekunda Hospital, need regular ambulance to be on standby for emergency. All scan machines in all our hospitals should always be functioning and affordable to patients for tests.
Mr President, it is indisputable that a sick nation must be treated, for an unhealthy and sick people will not prioritise serving its people and in fact, would be a burden and growth retardation factor to the same system that it works to build.
Whilst few people may agree that the current state of our health sector has progressed over the past 5 years, many would present the enormous deficit that proves a stagnant, if not a regressing health system.
Mr President, firstly, we recognise and commend our Cuban friends’ long-standing generous partnership of 27 years now. Every two or four years, Cuba has been sending over 100 medical personnel to assist in our health system. Notwithstanding, we continue to invest enormous financial resources into this apparent win-win partnership, though there is glaring evidence that unless we maximize our plans to seek a permanent solution, it would be safe to prophesy that this on-going partnership would not be sustainable. We must be reminded that despite all these helping hands, without the appropriate medical equipment in place, medical specialists would remain redundant, as is currently the case for some of both our “borrowed” and local specialists. This will be expanded on below.
Mr President, as the old adage says: it is better to teach a man how to fish so that he could feed a nation, than to simply be giving him fish, which only feeds his family, and for how long?!
It is hard to imagine that for a country of nearly 3 million people, there is presently only a single Gambian urologist, psychiatrist, cardiologist, hepatologist, peadiatric surgeon, etc. Making matters even more daunting is the fact that with all our rheumatological ailments, we have no rheumatologist in the country! Likewise, to the best of our knowledge, there presently is none of these specialists: endocrinologist, neurologist, hematologist, ENT, cardiothoracic and plastic surgeons and more.
Certainly, in the area of higher health education, it must be acknowledged that gains are in-progress through the recently commenced home-grown clinical specialists, which we applaud, but more importantly though, we hope and encourage that this continues to get maximal support from the government for sustenance. Of the five English-speaking West African countries, our country is the last to train its own specialists and hence the stagnancy or slow-pace health progress. Making a further comparison, our immediate French-speaking neighbour and others in the sub-region have sustained similar trainings for many years now. Therefore, we hope to learn from these countries to not only mass-produce specialists, but to produce quality brain specialists, retain them and sustain the training programmes.
Mr President, whilst our neighbouring countries are able to do routine cardiology interventions such as coronary angiograph, angioplasty and stenting, pacemaker fixing and coronary by-pass. The unavailable “others” further include kidney transplant and cancer therapy modalities like chemo- and radio-therapies. Patients are still being referred abroad for these and other evaluation and management interventions. To minimize such expensive health tourism unfortunately available to only a few, the key is to PRIORITIZE!
Mr President, like our other West African counterparts and elsewhere in the African continent, we need to provide incentives to our health care workers to encourage them to stay home and feel rewarded for their continuous life-risking interventions, despite the love for the job for many. For example, our doctors and nurses continue to earn one of the least salaries and allowances in our sub-region: none or very few with only government employment could own a house without income supplementations from the private sector and hence our health workers go from hospital to hospital for “salary add-on”. Doctors who maintain only government salaries work with little commitment or leave for the M.R.C., the private sector or as a last resort, leave the nation’s shores for greener pastures. The latter is what makes our health care workers to be known as having the highest emigrating rates compared to others, particularly in our sub-region.
Mr President, regular maintenance of machines in the hospital should be catered as there are many faulty machines lying in corners of hospitals gathering dusts. Many people are suffering and dying or even travelling to neighbouring countries just for a series of tests to be done due to the lack of those testing machines in The Gambia.
Dialysis machines in most public hospitals are also not functioning at the moment, which is life threatening to many kidney patients in the country. Such situations should not be allowed in our hospitals.
The Health Ministry should assess the situation in the hospitals and make procurement of some of these machines that are badly needed in the country and help reduce the travelling to other countries for such tests and treatment.
Finally Mr President, the whole nation is eagerly waiting for our next Vice President and the power rests on you to appoint a seasoned, competent and well experienced personality, a man or woman, to avoid any constitutional breach/violation.
Making a timely appointment of another VP is a constitutional requirement and so there is no time to waste. The ball is in your court as empowered by the constitution for you to choose whoever you think is appropriate for the top job.
Good day!