r. Bato Amu, a Pediatrician, and the local chapter President of the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas, ANPA, agrees with the banning of the Nigerian public officials from overseas Medical services, and wants it enforced immediately. Dr. Bato Amu shared his view with me over the weekend while at the Igbo Day celebration symposium at the Atlanta City Hall. The Igbo Union organized a symposium on the role of Igbo Women and Youth in Nigeria, as part of its activities for the Igbo Day celebration in Atlanta.

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The hint about the ban was given by Minister of Health, Prof Eyitayo Lambo, and later confirmed by President Obasanjo at the commissioning of the refurbished ultra-modern Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (AB-UTH), located at Shika, near Zaria, Kaduna state.

"Once the eight University Teaching Hospitals currently undergoing rehabilitation are completed, government would no longer be in a position to sponsor overseas treatment of its officials,"

Should Nigerian Government ban its public officials from Medical overseas trips if no adequate medical facilities are available in Nigeria for their treatment? My first reaction would be that no government should dictate where its public officials should get medical attention for their illnesses. Finding out that the government sponsors such medical trips, made it clearer to the public that such ban should be in order and Nigerians should support it.

Dr. Bato Amu, the local Chapter President of ANPA, is of the opinion that such ban would help to improve the medical services in Nigeria. According to Dr. Amu, Nigeria medical infrastructures are in shambles and if the Hospitals were better equipped, most Nigerian Doctors abroad would pack up and move back to Nigeria within months.

Dr. Amu has led a couple of Medical Missions to Nigeria as part of his humanitarian gesture in giving back to Nigeria. His most recent trip was to Kwara State in May 2005. From his experience on the Medical Missions,

"a lot need to be done in the areas of infrastructures, maintenance on what are available, the equipments, and the highly well qualified staff that have little or nothing to work with in the Nigeria Hospitals. Regrettably there are no equipments for most of Nigerian Doctors in Nigeria to perform their jobs, which make it look like they are incompetent."

According to him, if Obasanjo knows that he cannot be flown out when he catches cold; he would make sure that Nigeria has at least one modern Hospital very close by in Abuja. The same thing would happen with the State Governors.

"The Nigerian Government ought to pump money into the Hospitals, and bring them up to standard with modern technology. With that being done a lot of life will be saved",

The Nigerian public officials ban from overseas medical treatment would help to sanitize medical services in Nigeria and an improvement in the funding of the Hospitals so that Nigerian medical services would be able to compete with any medical institutions anywhere in the world.

"There is no question about it, Nigerian medical Doctors are well trained and you can see how well they perform in the Americas,"

He went further

"Biko, if these Hospitals are refurbished to the standard level, I will park my business back to Nigeria within three months. In addition to corruption among the Nigerian public officials, the Hospitals are under-funded, the managements don't take care of what they have, and would not implement the existing policies. The government should go further to ban a one-man Hospital or medical service. The system whereby a Doctor would convert his home into a Hospital and be a Surgeon, Pediatrician, Internal Medicine, Family Practice, Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist all in the same roof, by one single Medical Doctor. A group of Specialists could get together under the same roof to practice their specialized areas."

Dr. Amu was of the view that Nigeria has very highly qualified medical practitioners, trained by excellent teachers that have produced the best medical doctors in Nigeria. When I mentioned to Dr. Amu that University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Nsukka is among the eight Teaching Hospitals to be refurbished, he quickly seized the opportunity to pay tribute to one of his teachers who trained him at University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, UNTH, Nsukka. He saw him as one of the best teachers that have produced very high-ranking medical doctors in Nigeria. He described him as a giant while his other colleague, Dr. Buchi Ukabiala, a class of 1978 also, referred to the late Professor as a "Titan". He is currently attending Pediatric Surgeon, Blank Children's Hospital, Des Moines, Indiana. Amu and Ukabiala are of the opinion that Nigerian Trained medical Doctors are capable of competing with their counterparts anywhere in the world.

Dr. Amu Bato C. Amu, MD, FACP, qualified late Professor Gibert Obiafor Onuaguluchi as a Giant among Men. In his tribute to the Medical Giant, he states,

"Many have written, and many more will write, fitting tributes to Prof. Onuaguluchi; highlighting his many educational as well as scholarly achievements. Others will rightfully underscore his institution-building genius, his indefatigable courage and commitment to scholarship and to his students. We will read over and over again from a hundred quarters or more, and as well we should, of his superlative plucking of the "golden fleece" of knowledge from Denis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha; Higher College Yaba, Lagos; University College, Ibadan; his post-graduate education in London, England and Glasgow, Scotland, culminating in a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.).

All that would be completely in order, except that they tell us mostly what that great man of learning achieved intellectually, but they tell us precious little about what made the man tick. For many vulgar careerists have gathered fistfuls of credentials and given little or nothing back to humanity! What was Prof. Onuaguluchi's moving spirit? What was his enervating life force? What made him go at it and keep at it against all odds, and in spite of all manner of countervailing forces, all manner of distracting temptations, all manner of malevolent spirits? For it is in the answer to those questions that the very core of the man is to be found.

Here is my own twofold answer to those begging questions. The first is God, who in his infinite wisdom and equally infinite love, sees fit, every now and again, to send into our undeserving midst, benevolent giants such as Prof. Onuaguluchi; for let no one forget that his illustrious last name bespoke the mission his entire life turned out to be-'the mouth that speaks for and on behalf of his God.'

My second answer is an extended branch from the tree trunk of the first: Prof. Onuaguluchi's congenital humanity, his felicitous candor, as well as his unalloyed patriotism. If a man can live for much more that these qualities, then he is not a man at all but a god, and I, for one, has not yet met such a man. As for this particular man-Prof. Onuaguluchi, I was singularly blessed to have had the lifetime opportunity to sit at his Colossus feet as one of his privileged students at a medical school in Nigeria.

Adieu Prof. Onuaguluchi yours has been a life lived nobly in scholarship and service. The cells of our brains and hearts have your name and blessed memory etched in their membranes. We all will miss you very dearly, "Professor" or "Uncle". Be assured that your teachings and kindness will not be in vain and on behalf of my family, my graduating class of 1978, our Alma Mata, the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas (ANPA) and all the colleagues and students whose lives you touched at innumerable institutions, I say, "REST IN PERFERCT PEACE SIR". You have done your part."

According to Dr. Buchi Ukabiala, who also is a graduate of Class 78, sent me this piece about late Professor Onuaguluchi

"There is something fascinating about formidable and driving characters. Unforgettable men whose mere recall or presence command vivid attention and respect. Forces of nature in human form who make an otherwise impossible task simple and ordinary. Professor Onuaguluchi was such a man. The year was 1973 and we were in parasitology class with Professor Okpala. We were handling and studying a particularly disgusting specimen that the Professor had personally obtained from Atani and which he had described in particularly colorful terms. He noticed some squeamishness and reluctance in some of us aspiring doctors and felt totally scandalized. He found it necessary to fore-warn us about some of the fire -breathing men who awaited us in Enugu. Professor Onuaguluchi was one of them. After Pre-Med, we still needed two hard years and 2nd MD to make our first contact with Prof. Who would ever forget those lectures! We always came in infused with a combination of trepidation and anticipation - even excitement. Prof. never had lecture notes. He would walk in with boundless energy; his expression defined by palpable intellect; his hands slicing through the air like sabers for emphasis. You could see and feel the laser beams of confident knowledge in his eyes. All he needed was a piece of chalk and the blackboard would quickly become filled with pharmacological formulae. If he threw a question at you you'd better have an intelligent answer. His dedication to his students was legendary. Even after he moved to Jos, he would still return to Enugu to give those legendary three-hour Saturday morning lectures. From him, I learnt the elegant concept that all knowledge is in an unbroken circle, one thing leading to the other seamlessly and with out compartments and boundaries. He always encouraged us to study pharmacological agents in families and groups. That way, all you needed to do with a new medicine was just fit it into the right group and you will only have to worry about differences and exceptions. Prof. will always be fondly remembered by those of us who were blessed and privileged enough to be his pupils. Titans such as these no longer walk the Earth!"

Nigerian Medical industry have likes late Professor Gibert Obiafor Onuaguluchi, who have produced the best Doctors in Nigeria, but now we found most of them in other countries due to the inept attitude of Nigerian leaders.

Some Nigerians first reaction would be that Nigerian government cannot ban any one from traveling to any parts of the world to seek Medical help, provided they have the means of doing so. They might have a change of mind when they realized that Nigerian Government sponsors the overseas medical trips for its officials, especially the policy makers. Possibly most allocations to the Hospitals end up in their pockets. Such money used for their overseas medical trips which is part of corruption, could be diverted to improving the Hospital services. Which means that the only people that are destined to be kept alive are the public officials, the top guns, and the policy makers that have the means to rush to Britain, Germany for a common cold or headache at the expense of poor majority Nigerians?

If we look at it at the surface we would state that there is nothing wrong for any 'free' citizen to go anywhere in the world, provided the individual has the means. That is their personal health no one should mess with and they should be allowed to seek for medical treatment somewhere else, if they so desired, since such is not available in their country.

The most disturbing part of Nigeria health policy is for the government to sponsor public officials abroad for treatment, instead of making provision for adequate health care for Nigerians. When there is an avenue for them to sneak out of the country, not paying for the medical treatments, how do we expect them to adequately take care of the Hospitals under their care? This is not to say that the Government cannot, as a matter of gesture, assist private individuals whose last hope is to get to the Hospitals where we could safe their life, since such services are not available in Nigeria.

We have thousands of Medical Doctors across the Nigerian boarders who are willing to return home and take care of their fellow Nigerians. In a situation where we have one physician for over 2, 000 population, how much does he want to accomplish in taking care of the patients. The government should, in addition to changing the policy, must put more money into sustaining the infrastructure in the Hospitals, equipping them with modern technology. Nigeria can do that if the leaders care about their citizens. Nigerians hope that when Specialist Hospitals in Jos, Ilorin, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Maiduguri, Lagos, Nsukka, and Jos are completed, Medical services in Nigeria would take a different dimension in providing medical services for Nigerians with little or no hassle.

With the ban on the overseas trips Nigeria can start having the medical Doctors returning to the country. Hopefully President Clinton would not be disappointed, as he once said that if Nigerian medical Doctors would return to Nigeria, there will be a big vacuum created by that act in the American Health care industry. Nigerians contribute immensely to the health sector in the United States of America.

The earlier Nigerian government banned Nigeria public officials' overseas medical trips, and refurbished quite a number of Hospitals in Nigeria the better for the 'Brain Gain' in the health industry. If they want the health sector to be working well, Nigerian Government should make sure the policymakers should be treated in the same Hospital when they are sick.

Such policy of sponsoring the public officials abroad for treatment should be abolished. Nonetheless, the government should find another alternative for them to take care of their medical needs. Not just public officials, but private citizens as well will be saving a lot of their fortunes by getting same treatment at home rather than traveling abroad. It is not sufficient to ban the public officials without necessarily improving upon the Hospitals in Nigeria.