The Fight Against Disease

The world focused on Ebola but what about malaria and measles? Sierra Leone had some of the highest rates of death from tuberculosis, malaria and measles in the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres says the Ebola outbreak has affected the attitudes of people towards modern healthcare.

A study published in the journal, Science, earlier this month warns that measles could cause as many deaths as Ebola after vaccinations were disrupted.

"We project that after six to 18 months of disruptions, a large connected cluster of children unvaccinated for measles will accumulate across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone," the study says. It finds that the number of children susceptible to measles in the three countries is expected to double, resulting in between 2,000 and 16,000 additional deaths.

Nearly 500 health workers - most of them local - have died as a result of Ebola

South Africa's real drug problem

Lifesaving drugs under disputed patents could become more easily available in future depending on the outcome of a case before the South African Supreme Court of Appeal. The case revolves around a Sanofi-Aventis cancer drug docetaxel, an important drug used to treat many forms of cancer. It has the potential to save lives or improve the quality of life of cancer patients, but remains expensive as it is under patent.

More often than not, patented medicines are more expensive than generic versions of drugs, with most cancer medicines being extremely expensive. It is not unusual for cancer patients on medical aid to exhaust their oncology benefits, facing crippling bills at the end of their treatment regimen. It is known that once a generic enters the market it encourages competition driving prices down even further.

The Treatment Action Campaign is arguing that it is in the interests of cancer patients that the generic drugs be available, and that the harm to patients will be greater than the harm to Sanofi-Aventis. If the Court accepts TAC's argument it will be an important advance for the rights of access to affordable medicines. It will mean that in future in any dispute over patents in respect of medicines, the courts will have to consider the public interest and the Constitutional right of access to health care services.

Unlike many other countries where patents can only be registered following substantive examinations, in South Africa it is relatively easy to register patents. South Africa currently provides patent protection beyond what is required by the TRIPS agreement. Unlike South Africa, India, Brazil and Thailand, among others, have used flexibilities allowed under TRIPS to curb excessive patenting of pharmaceuticals and promote public health. South Africa granted 2,442 pharmaceutical patents in 2008 alone, Brazil only granted 278 pharmaceutical patents between 2003 and 2008. Generic versions of the disputed drug are now available in the United States - a country that upholds strict patent protection.

The consequences of South Africa's strict patent protection are high medicine costs and the delayed availability of affordable generic medicines. Medicine expenditure increased 25.2% between 2008 and 2010, while actual medicine use only increased 5.8%.

Access to life-saving medicine is a human right, not to be dictated by a bank balance or company profits.


http://allafrica.com/stories/201205141151.html

Kenya's nurses strike

Kenya's public hospitals face a potentially devastating health worker shortage after the government fired 25,000 striking nurses.

Luke K'Odambo, chairman of the National Nurses Association of Kenya, said that the sacking did "not make sense in any way", and that it was not possible to dismiss such a large part of the workforce.

"We are ignoring the sacking threat." Alex Orina, spokesman of the 40,000-strong Kenya Health Professionals Society, said. "These are cat-and-mouse games, you cannot sack an entire workforce. It is a ploy to get us to rush back to work, but our strike continues until our demands are met," .

The nurses went on strike on March 1 to protest the government's failure to implement a salary increase agreed last year, when they also stopped work to press for improved services in Kenya's mostly ill-equipped public hospitals. On average, a health worker earns about 25,000 shillings ($300) a month in salary and allowances, and this amount was likely to double if their demand for higher allowances were met. Private hospitals and clinics, where richer families send their sick, have opened as usual because their nurses are not members of the strikers' union. In public hospitals patients pay as little as one and a half dollars for most outpatient services. This is incomparable to established private health facilities where patients pay up to over 120 dollars for outpatient services.

The industrial action comes barely two months after government doctors in Kenya went on strike for a rise in salary

"Nyongo, we want our rights, like you had medical treatment abroad," the protesters chanted in Swahili, in reference to a stay in the United States last year when the minister was treated for prostate cancer.

the real drug problem

Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mainly young children and pregnant women. Hopes of controlling malaria in Africa could be wrecked by criminals who are circulating counterfeit and substandard drugs, threatening millions of lives, scientists are warning. Large parts of Africa are threatened by the distribution of fake and poor quality anti-malarials made illicitly in China.

Some of the fake drugs contain artemisinin, but not enough to kill all the parasites in a child's body. Not only will the child struggle to recover, but the parasites that survive may become resistant to the drug and spread a form of the disease that ACTs (artemisinin combination therapy) will no longer cure. Analysis also showed some counterfeits contained a mixture of wrong active pharmaceutical ingredients, some of which may initially alleviate malaria symptoms but would not cure malaria. Worse still, these unexpected ingredients could cause potentially serious side effects, particularly if they were to interact with other medication that the patient was taking, such as anti-retroviral therapies for HIV.

It will be very hard for the affected African countries to tackle the problem, however. WHO has said that 30% of drug regulatory authorities don't function. They don't list which they are but logically they are likely to be in economically poor, malarious countries.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/16/fake-poor-quality-malaria-drugs-africa

When Free Access is not Free

Half of the 340,000 deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes each year occur in Africa. 80 percent of the world’s maternal deaths occur in just 21 nations, 15 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the University of Washington study. Uganda was among them. About 5,200 women died from pregnancy-related causes in the country in 2008, the researchers estimated.

Dr. Rafael Lozano, a professor at the university, said that except for recent gains in saving the lives of H.I.V.-positive pregnant women with antiretroviral treatments largely financed by donors, “you see basically almost no progress in maternal deaths in Uganda.” As the United States and other donors have given African nations billions of dollars to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases, helping millions of people survive, most of the African governments have reduced their own share of domestic spending devoted to health, shifting to other priorities. For every dollar of foreign aid given to the governments of developing nations for health, the governments decreased their own health spending by 43 cents to $1.14, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found in a 2010 study.

According to the institute’s updated estimates, Uganda put 57 cents less of its own money toward health for each foreign aid dollar it collected. Rogers Enyaku, a finance expert in Uganda’s Health Ministry, disputed the assertion, saying the country’s own health spending had increased, “but not that substantially.” Still, the government had paid more than half a billion dollars for fighter jets and other military hardware — almost triple the amount of its own money dedicated to the entire public health system in the last fiscal year.

Poor people surged into Uganda’s public health system when the government abolished patient fees a decade ago. Increasingly, African countries are adopting similar policies, and experts say that many more people are getting care as a result. But Uganda’s experience illustrates the limits of that care when a system is poorly managed and lacks the resources to deliver decent services, experts say. At regional hospitals like the one here in Arua, more than half the positions for doctors are vacant, part of a broader shortage that includes midwives and other health workers. A majority of clinics and hospitals reported regularly running out of essential medicines, while only a third of facilities delivering babies are equipped with basics like scissors, cord clamps and disinfectant, according to a 2010 Health Ministry report. Dr. Emmanuel Odar, the hospital’s sole obstetrician, said that even in childbirth emergencies, families must buy missing supplies themselves, typically at nearby pharmacies. Patients without money must beg or borrow it, Dr. Odar said. “We are overwhelmed with cases of people looking for free services, and they expect a lot despite supplies not there, human resources lacking and the beds not enough,” he said.

When Ms. Nalubowa, 40, a peasant farmer and a mother of seven, arrived at the decrepit hospital in Mityana, said her mother-in-law, Rhoda Kukkiriza, nurses demanded a bribe of about $24 and more money to buy airtime for a cellphone call to the doctor, accusations the nurses have denied. Ms. Kukkiriza said she had less than a dollar left after spending $2.40 to buy a razor blade, gloves and other items the hospital lacked. Unable to pay the bribe, Ms. Nalubowa was taken to the maternity ward and left unattended, her mother-in-law said. “As she pushed with the labor pains, all that came out was blood,” Ms. Kukkiriza said. “Sylvia called out, ‘I’ll sell all my pigs, I’ll sell my chickens, my goats — please, nurses, come help me.’ ” Even if a doctor had arrived promptly, the hospital staff would have struggled to save Ms. Nalubowa, who bled to death. Dr. Vincent Kawooya, the hospital’s medical superintendent, said there was only one small unit of blood for a child in stock that night. The health minister himself toured the hospital after Ms. Nalubowa’s death incited demonstrations, but Dr. Kawooya said the minister refused to set foot in the operating room, with its moldy walls and leaky ceiling, saying it should be condemned. The roof of the maternity ward was a home to bats, and droppings come down its inner walls.

“We are in a state of emergency as far as maternal services are concerned,” Dr. Sentumbwe-Mugisa said.

the health exodus

The global shortage of health workers is estimated at 4.2 million by the World Health Organization (WHO), but the migration of doctors, nurses, midwives and pharmacists from poor to rich countries means the shortfall is not evenly distributed - of the 57 nations identified as having reached a crisis point, 36 are in sub-Saharan Africa.

In some countries with fragile health systems and heavy disease burdens, over half of all highly trained health workers have left for job opportunities abroad. In some of the worst cases rural hospitals have been left with just one doctor and a handful of nurses to attend to thousands of patients. Skilled professionals whose salaries are so low that they have to struggle to make ends meet will obviously look for better paying opportunities elsewhere, either in the private or NGO sectors, or overseas. Some have pointed out that the Global Code of Practice, as well as other interventions designed to reduce health personnel migration, infringe on the right of health workers to leave their countries like any other workers in search of a better life. Martha Kwataine of the Malawi Health Equity Network described it as a potential abuse of human rights. “Why should we make agreements just for health workers?” she said. “As human beings, they have a right to seek employment where they want.”

More money is not usually enough to keep an overworked, under-supported nurse in a rural clinic where she lacks the essential drugs and equipment to do her job properly, there are no good schools to send her children, and no opportunities for further training or career advancement.

“One of the biggest de-motivators - if you’re trained to provide care and save lives - is to find yourself in a remote, under-resourced location and your hands are tied by a lack of equipment, personnel and drugs,” said Dr George Pariyo of the Global Health Workforce Alliance.

In South Africa there are about 67 doctors per 100,000 people, but only 22 of those work in the public sector and a mere 5 are in rural public health facilities, despite the introduction of special allowances for health professionals working in rural areas.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportID=92949

100 million made poor by medical bills

In 2000, African heads of state committed to spend 15% of government funds on health. So far three countries (Liberia, Rwanda and the United Republic of Tanzania) have achieved this. An average of US$ 44 per capita is required to ensure access to even a small set of quality health services in low income countries. Many struggle to do this. Today, 31 countries spend less than US$ 35 per person on health.

Health bills push 100 million people into poverty each year. "No one in need of health care should have to risk financial ruin as a result," said Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO.

Health in Eritrea

Health and living conditions in Eritrea

The treatments of diseases are by both native and modern medicine. The native medicine involves herbs in drink, powder, cream or other forms. They can be applied externally or taken orally. Most common diseases are infectious and or preventable, such as dysentery malaria and typhoid. Prevention is not always easy. Neither is it successful because of a lack of information and education about the diseases and also a lack of proper hygiene.

In case of pregnancy, mothers often meet complications at birth, such as excessive bleeding or still birth. Some people have real fear of surgical operations, fearing they will die in the process. The treatment service is not easily accessible to the poor, who always face the problem of payment of the fee that are now changed in most health institutes. Some get medical help when it’s already too late. Often, ailments are caused by poor diet and feeding habits.

Numerous families use pit latrines in overcrowded town slums and villages. There are always associated sanitation problems, as people rarely cooperate to maintain such facilities.

Water to drink and for household use is always brought from streams and wells, which also service domestic animals. Such water is always drunk without having been boiled, again because of education and fuel problems such as firewood, the main source of heating but which is becoming scarce. Consequently, there are many opportunities for water born diseases.

Rarely do people undergo any medical examinations except when compelled to do so, when they are going abroad. But then why does this all happen? It is because most people do not have a proper understanding and education about the world we live in, which presently is capitalism, a system based on competition, class struggle and conflict. Some women can have as many as 12 children simply because they are ignorant of family planning services or because of these services and even because of superstitious and religious beliefs.

This results in overcrowded families Homes (houses) are built of wood, mud and grass thatching or some similar plant thatching. Most of these grass thatched houses do not have ventilators. This accelerates health problems. Because of poverty on the side of the patients, medical workers are more often than not compelled to handle only the symptoms of the diseases not the disease itself for this may be all the patients may be able to afford. It’s also common to find people living with domestic animals such as sheep, goats and hens, all under the same roof. The level of development in medical technology is adequate enough to provide decent healthcare to everybody living on Earth. But this does not happen, since access to healthcare is based on the ability to pay. In Eritrean rural or urban life is in stark colours.

Coke or drugs

In Uganda and across Africa people are dying of diseases such as malaria and TB because they can't get the drugs to treat them.

Malaria, the commonest killer in Uganda, takes more than 300 lives every day, mostly under-fives and pregnant women. There are pills that can stop malaria in its tracks at an early stage before the sufferer succumbs to a high fever, delirium and, in the worst cases, coma.But go to many health centres and you will be disappointed. Nursing staff shake their heads. "We don't have," they say.

On tables in huts in Uganda and all over Africa, they sell Coca-Cola. The drinks giant has reached into the darkest corners of the continent. Coke is everywhere. Essential medicines, many of them paid for by governments , are not.

Tiriri health centre in Katine , which should have the capacity of a small hospital, has no Coartem, an anti-malarial and the most needed drug in the region. Frequently it has virtually no medicines at all, even paracetamol. Stock-outs are the norm all over Africa. You can get Coke but you can't get a painkiller, an antibiotic or a drug to save your child from malaria.
Tiriri health centre is short of many other drugs – antibiotics, paracetamol, aspirin, quinine injections (a second-line treatment for malaria too severe to be treated by Coartem), diclofenac for pain and inflammation. The empty shelves in government clinics drive people to private drug shops, which have mushroomed in the villages and towns. But because they have to pay and are poor, families can only buy a small handful of pills – not necessarily the right ones and, quite possibly, fakes. Poor people may buy six pills when they need 30, or they will buy 20 and stop after 10 when they feel better, saving the rest for another crisis. That's how resistance grows to antibiotics and to TB and Aids drugs, which can then spread around the globe. In this way, poverty and the inadequacies of public sector drug supply in Africa threaten us all.

Novartis, the huge Swiss drug company , owns the market-leading anti-malarial Coartem . Novartis has dropped its price over the years from $1.57 to 80 cents, but that's still too much in countries such as Uganda. To improve the situation, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) in Geneva channels money donated by affluent governments including the UK and US to poor nations to buy supplies of the drug. But in Uganda in 2005, it all went wrong. GFATM suspended all its grants to the country: money was being siphoned off and officials in the ministry of health were blamed. Corruption trials are ongoing.The GFATM scandal has had a huge impact in Uganda. While few doubt the fund had to act to stop its money being diverted into people's pockets, the people who really suffered are those where the anti-malarials ran out.

The battle is now not just to get HIV medicines to people with Aids, but to get a consistent, affordable supply of essential drugs to all who need them.It's too important to leave to the market.

extracted from here

capitalism is the cancer

A third of cancer deaths in Africa were preventable and another third were treatable.

Alan Milburn , UK former health secretary ,added: "And where we can't prevent or treat the cancer, we must at least provide modest forms of palliation - other than giving a paracetamol. Unfortunately all too often that's what you get as pain relief for cancer in an African country."

32 of the 53 countries in Africa have no radiotherapy services, nor prevention or screening programmes.

Vaccine programmes have begun recently in the UK and the US to protect girls against HPV, the virus which causes about 70% of cervical cancers, before they become sexually active.

Mr Milburn told BBC News: "The HPV vaccine is affordable in the US and the UK, but not in Africa. Now doesn't that ring a bell? People used to say that HIV treatments were unaffordable. But then the world acted and the pharmaceutical companies caved in to pressure, and eventually did the right thing. It took a decade to act though.."

Nigerian government's health neglect

In Nigeria , 59,000 women die during or soon after childbirth every year.

Nigeria's maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world, after India -- 1,100 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. The country is home to 2 percent of the global population, but 10 percent of all maternal deaths take place there.

The Center for Reproductive Rights places blame squarely on the "government's lack of political will" to implement policies and allocate funds to improve women's health and prevent maternal deaths.

It also points to widespread corruption in the oil-rich country as a fundamental problem undermining health care for women.

For example, one study found that 42 percent of Nigerian health care workers went unpaid for as long as six months, although the funds had been provided by the federal government. As a result, these workers began demanding "contributions" from women seeking maternity-related care.Similarly, the report notes that public health facilities demand that women seeking care provide many of the needed supplies (disinfectant, bandages, etc.), and require the women to purchase a particular brand.Women who deliver in hospitals must pay immediately or risk detention. One informant told CRR researchers of a woman who fled the hospital in the night after undergoing a birth by Caesarian section, even before her stitches were removed.

"I have seen women who after delivery had to come round the wards begging for money."

The government has also failed to provide access to information on family planning and contraception, two issues very closely related to maternal death. Early marriage is common in Nigeria, and young women are often required to conceive immediately and frequently, endangering their health.This failure, CRR charges, means that the government "violates its duties under international human rights law, namely its obligation to ensure the right to health, the right to access family planning services and information, the right to decide on the number and spacing of children, and the right to equality and non-discrimination."

African health worker gap catastrophic

Socialist Banner has previously reported upon the African brain drain and especially in the health service sector ( here and here ) . Freedom Press have produced an article which is worthy of a re-post .

Rob Ray looks at claims that a brain drain to West is crippling healthcare across the African continent, for Freedom Press

It has been revealed that the global shortfall in healthcare professionals has reached four million people – with one million needed in Africa alone. The figures were voiced at the Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, which opened in the Ugandan capital of Kampala on March 3rd.
Poor working conditions in Africa, along with heavy incentives from the West, are drawing a heavy proportion of newly-trained health professionals out of the continent. Some 57 countries, especially in Africa and Asia, are particularly affected and unable to effectively provide health services for the population, which also hampers prevention and information campaigns, drug distribution and other life-saving interventions.

Africa has been particularly badly hit as measures from wealthy countries to encourage skilled workers to emigrate have stripped African countries, particularly in sub-saharan regions, of up to 75% of their physicians (Mozambique) and up to 82% of nurses.

"They seek better employment and quality of life. Income is an important motivation for migration [as well as] better working conditions, career opportunities and more job satisfaction," Sigrun Mogedal, one of the conference organisers, said.

Across the continent, Africa has 11% of the world population and 24% of the global burden of disease, but only 3% of the world’s health workers. Nine countries, including Britain, the US, France, South Africa, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Australia and Portugal, received the vast majority of all migration from Africa – 92.4%, amounting to over 65,000 people in the year 2000 (the most recent figures available).

Britain has been particularly active in Kenya, recruiting the vast majority of the 51% of healthcare workers which have left the country, leaving many of those injured in recent fighting around the elections unable to find medical help.

At the conference, Ugandan health minister Stephen Malinga said that wealthier African countries, particularly South Africa, had been poaching healthcare workers as their own emigrate – around 5% of South African health professionals leave the country. The effect created is of a feeder chain, with the wealthiest countries buying in doctors and nurses from African countries, wealthier African countries copying the tactic to draw people away from weaker neighbours, and the poorest and most vulnerable populations left with the least protection.

Uganda is facing an acute shortage as there is only one doctor for every 15,000 patients, far below the recommended 1.5 per 10 patients. Last October, the Ugandan Ministry of Health reported a staggering shortfall of 2,290 nurses out of the required 5,568 in government funded hospitals alone.

While money is often sent back to the country by healthcare workers abroad, the absence of proper healthcare is contributing to a catastrophic fatality rate. The Global Health Workforce Alliance said one in four doctors trained in Africa was working in western industrialised countries.

The Draining of Health- workers

Socialist Banner has directed attention to the export of people and their skills and talents from African countries before ( here and here ) and yet another report on the problem has come to our attention that highlights the problem of the brain drain .

Poor working conditions and inadequate pay have driven away health professionals from developing countries, thereby undermining medical services, a conference to address the global shortage has noted. The deficit, the conference heard, had reached four million doctors, nurses, midwives and other healthcare professionals. Of these, one million are needed in Africa alone .

Some 57 countries, especially in Africa and Asia, are particularly affected and unable to effectively provide access to essential health services, prevention and information campaigns, drug distribution and other life-saving interventions such as immunisation, maternity care and treatment of several diseases. While Sub-Saharan Africa has 11 percent of the world population and 24 percent of the global burden of disease, it has only 3 percent of the world’s health workers. In Africa, 36 countries have fewer than 2.3 doctors, nurses and midwives per 1,000 people, mainly because of “brain drain” of trained personnel to developed countries. Only two countries have fulfilled a 2001 pledge by African countries to commit 15% of their national budgets to funding the health sector to meet the Millennium Development Goals. None of the East African countries have met that pledge. Uganda contributes 9.6%, while Kenya and Tanzania contribute only slightly more.

Uganda’s health minister, Stephen Malinga, said his country had lost more than 500 doctors and thousands of nurses, of whom 200 were working in South Africa. "Our neighbours have also taken them ... they are paid in dollars in Sudan and others with indispensable expertise have gone to Rwanda," he said. Those who opt to stay in Uganda, Malinga explained, were earning so little they could often not afford to pay the rent. Uganda thus had one doctor for 100,000 patients. [ An EU official said "The corruption index in Uganda, especially in the health sector, is still very high. I think health comes second after the Police in corruption.”]

Global Health Workforce Alliance said one in four doctors trained in Africa was working in western industrialised countries.

"They seek better employment and quality of life. Income is an important motivation for migration as well as better working conditions, career opportunities and more job satisfaction," Sigrun Mogedal, one of the conference organisers said.

The conference held out its begging bowl to solve the problem with the usual plea for funds - a 10-year global action plan to deal with the problem, which would require US$3.3 billion per year to train 1.8 million health workers in Africa for the next eight years. Another $27 billion would be required to pay them to stay. Needless to say , no solution , at all .

Poor Health in South Africa

The deaths of up to 40,200 South African babies and children could be prevented every single year if gaps in the healthcare system, including poor patient care and lack of interventions to address HIV/AIDS, were addressed. Every year at least 20,000 babies are stillborn, another 22,000 die within the first month of their lives and 1,600 mothers die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Some 75,000 children die before their fifth birthday, according to a report.

"We are talking about a lot of deaths. Under five mortality appears to be increasing. Maternal mortality appears to be increasing. HIV infection amongst pregnant women appears to be increasing," says Dr Mark Patrick, a paediatrician at Grey's Hospital in Pietermaritzburg and one of the report's authors."The fact that 260 mothers, babies and children die every day in South Africa should make people stop and think and ask why this is happening."

Siera Leone's Poor Health

Adding to our earlier blog on the dire condition of the sierra Leone health reources , another report came to our attention .

In the 1970s records show tens of thousands of people used the health system every year. Sierra Leone was renowned for having some of the best surgical training facilities on the continent. Today, after the country’s devastating civil war from 1991 to 2002, the average life expectancy is 41. In 2007 Sierra Leone slipped down from second to last into last place in the UN Development Programme’s annual Human Development Index. The UN estimates there are just 65 trained medical doctors in the country to serve a population of 5 million who are mostly rural dwellers.

When people come to see Dr Dominic Weellah for anything more complicated than diarrhoea or malaria he often just gives them a placebo and sends them home.
“What else can I do?” he shrugged. “People just have to find their own way.”

Weellah’s clinic, in the remote centre of Sierra Leone, has no windows, just gaping holes in the walls and a rusty roof that has almost collapsed. There is no surgical equipment and a medical cabinet that is almost empty. He serves a community of over 10,000 people and the state-run clinic 17 km along unpaved roads is not much better.
“If you are really sick you either die or go to Freetown [more than 200 km west],” he said. “Even assuming patients can make it, facilities there are hardly brilliant.”

Indeed in Freetown the hospital facilities are shocking. Running water for an average of one hour every day .

“The most basic tools we need to do our work are not there,” said Sister Hannah Mansaray, a nurse and midwife. “We can’t even measure blood pressure.” When any surgery is performed, patients need to provide their own gauze, bandages and sterilising equipment, she said .
The hospital the Princess Christian does not have a proper blood bank. A small fridge only contained blood type O+.
“If people need a different blood they will have to come with someone who can provide it,”

Who are the criminals ?

From the BBC

A fully-equipped hospital that lay unused for two years has burned to the ground in northern Nigeria. The General Hospital in Maiduguri was built in 2006 but the state government refused to open it until the president came to cut the ribbon.
The governor had refused to open the hospital, which was ready for patients in June 2006, until former President Olusegun Obasanjo came to the state. His visit was postponed several times, the last being just two months before the election in 2007. His successor Umaru Yar'adua was due to visit later next month.

Borno was recently hit by a measles outbreak that killed hundreds of children across three states. Existing hospitals in Borno are poorly equipped and overcrowded.

Angry residents of Bulunkutu, where the hospital was situated, gathered around the burned hospital and shouted abuse at the alleged arsonists, local papers reported.
The governor addressed the arsonists through the media.
"There is not one hospital in the country owned by a state government that has the type of world class equipment we had in there. It is their people that would have benefitted," he told reporters at the scene.

Socialist Banner acknowledges the counter-productive result of burning down a hospital but , surely , this Nigerian state governor must stand condemned for placing party politics before peoples welfare - leaving a modern fully equipped sophistacated hospital empty for two years while people around it died from lack of medical attention . He and his suppoerters are no better than the actual arsonists .