The right to health is a very essential human right. When the right to health is realized, other rights can easily be realized.
Apart from food and water, one of the most important things to have is medicine. Food and water can sustain a healthy body. Medicine can nurse an unhealthy body back to health.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides in Article that, “
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard
of living adequate for the health and
wellbeing of himself and of his family,
including… medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in
the event of … sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other
lack of livelihood in circumstances
beyond his control.”
There is no way to have health if medical care is too expensive and government doesn’t do anything to restore the health security of it’s citizens so they can afford adequate medical care including medicines.
Before now Nigeria was already grappling with the japa syndrome where Nigerian doctors have been lured out of the country in very large numbers. Many doctors simply got fed up with the situation in the country. Now, there is a dent in the availability of doctors in Nigeria.
Pharmaceutical Japa
It now seems that a new issue is cropping up. The creeping rise of medicine cost beyond the reach of the average Nigerian. This is mainly because pharmaceutical companies have been packing up and leaving the country.
The other day, we wrote about the sudden high rise in the cost of inhalers for asthma. Inhalers like Seretide. Then just a few days ago, social media became awash with reports that the general price of Augmentin antibiotics has spiked from about N7000 to about N57000.
This is not good. Apart from hunger, another malady that must be avoided for the citizenry is illness without the ability to buy medication. Hunger can become very dangerous if one doesn’t eat in a few weeks. In the same way, many illnesses can become extremely harmful if a sick person doesn’t get treated on time. Sometimes such illnesses require urgent attention to nurse the patient back to health.
Nigerians have faced a lot since the recession of 2015. The government has an obligation to fulfill the right to health of Nigerians.
The government should bring down the rising prices of medicines through introduction of subsidies and effective engagement with pharmaceutical companies to invcentivise them to stay on in Nigeria.
