CMA knocks President for seeking treatment abroad

Bukola Adebayo

The Vice-President, Commonwealth Medical Association, Dr. Osahon Enabulele, has faulted President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to seek further treatment for an ear infection in a London hospital.

Enabulele, in a statement in Lagos on Monday, said the medical trip contradicted the Federal Government’s ban on foreign medical treatment for public office holders.

According to him, the decision was in violation of Section 46 of the National Health Act which seeks to address the abuse of tax payers’ resources through frivolous foreign medical travels.

Enabulele said the President had failed to lead by example by not making use of local medical facilities and personnel for a treatment that could have been handled in specialists’ hospitals in Nigeria.

He added that such trips were the reasons why Nigeria lost over $1bn to outbound medical tourism yearly.

Enabulele stated, “Without prejudice to the expert recommendation of President Buhari’s personal physician and the Ear, Nose and Throat specialist, who were said to have examined him in Abuja; I consider it a national shame that he had to be recommended for foreign medical care despite the presence of over 250 ENT specialists and professors in Nigeria, as well as a National Ear Centre located in Kaduna state.

“He should either have invited a consortium of ENT specialists in the country, or a Nigerian-trained ENT specialist practising anywhere in the world to Abuja to re-examine and treat him.

“If the equipment are unavailable then Mr. President should have used his current situation, though unfortunate, to commence the plan to re-equip Nigerian hospitals with modern state-of-the art facilities, by ordering for the needed equipment to enable the specialists to attend to him, and thereafter these facilities can be used to treat  other Nigerians with similar conditions.”

“If the ex- Governor of Kogi State, Idris Wada, sought treatment  in Nigeria when he suffered a fractured femur following a fatal road traffic accident in 2013,  there is no reason why Mr. President could not have stayed back in Nigeria to attend to his ear infection.”

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