Before coming here to post this, I had ranted. Ranted to myself, my couch, laptop, television, just about everything and anything that cared to listen. Therefore, I would post calmly and collectedly now. I have unloaded the anger. Most of my posts that luckily find their way to the rural doctor initiative platform and attract an audience reflect the life styles and activities of the average rural dweller: the conditions they live with and in, the incomparable dystopia they subsist within, the deplorable health system they contend with and the pathetic inexorable hardship that is a way of life for them. Most of them have never seen a doctor before, not virtually not real, even when graviously sick and dying! Most of them live in the nooks and corners of the rural areas. That is to say, they live in rural areas of another very rural area, where bikes cannot access. Electricity is a luxury never before beheld. Beds are straws and leaves carefully arranged on a sandy floor. Cars and bikes are items of immense magnitude and bewilderment to the senses only made possible by the ineluctability of fate occasioned by an illness. Internet, oh internet. This is like our conception of heaven and castles architecturally appealing built ethereally in our minds by the strength of our limitless imaginations to them. The only problem is, they don't weary their minds with such complications. Simplicity is the key for them. The succor brought forth by the daily rising and setting of the sun is enough for them to live and be content with. Phones? These are the sophistication that enthrall even the urban man. In the rural poor, phones are golden. Owning one is one thing, having the ability to source for credits for calls poses another. A third is accessing a network. This is for the basic phone. The smart ones are wishful thinking... Are they? They have better basic life necessities to wish for other than a phone. Basic amenities like water are scarce. The streams carry this life saving commodity for them for gratis. The foregoing should paint a picture of the people "we" are helping. "We", because, you and I, are partners in this herculean and tasking journey.
Out of your scarce financial resources on uncountable occasions, you have reduced its value with hope of helping the above class of people in the social strata. The rural doctor initiative has posted countable pictures from 2018 till this day to help this people. People who do not even know people exist beyond their own community. People who roundedly give up hope and resign to nature to either harvest their lives or give them another, whole or handicapped, but for your support. I am only worried for some online moralists and cloaked humanists who only see the gloom in our quest to better the lives of the people and question our methods. "Why have you posted their pictures? Did you obtain their permission? Is this ethically right? Are you really a doctor? You don't know the ethics of your profession!", they would question. We are truly really worried for Nigeria with these sorts of social media and online conglomeration of self-acclaimed moralists and pristine jurists. These sets of people will never support a poor man who approaches them for funds to pay their hospital bills. These are the merchants of ignomy who would scroll past a post without a picture soliciting for funds to pay for a mere operation and bedspace fee of less than $20. Yet they roam about looking for whom to make miserable as their lives probably outlooks. No NGO can grow without begging for the reason for starting the organization in the first place. It is almost impossible to have a billionaire support a cause with a dollar of their hard earned money without an unrequited toil, talk more of donating for cause without a face. I have had to push myself the extra mile to learn to be a surgeon(all types), physician, pediatrician, obstetrician and gynecologist, and a medical officer of health just so I can help as much as I can, as many as possible, to ensure that patients get healthcare, standard basic one, at an affordable, available and accessible manner as possible without going into catastrophic spending. This is the self development I have had to undergo at the detriment of career growth! Reading even when I am not in a residency program just to provide close to perfect internationally acclaimed standard of care for the people who need it the most but cannot afford it. I have had cause to resuscitate an almost dead pregnant woman to life, thanks to my ACLS/BLS knowledge, perform intra abdominal surgeries with successes, managed a preterm in a local NICU thanks to dedicated training from my teachers during internship, several health promotion outreaches and prevention of disease seminars, thanks to my public health degree program and lots more that we haven't shared here. Is it the multiple road traffic accidents that we have managed to stabilize before referral? The gargantuan health gap in the rural area is best imagined. It is so bad that the locals can't differentiate between a doctor and other health providers because of the unbelievably large gorge and crevace between them and standard health care. They do not even know whether another level of Healthcare like the tertiary exists out there. Any referral to a hospital to a city where they are largely claustrophobic is a sentence to death to some of them, they would rather go home and manage until the grim reaper soothes the pain for them. It is pathetic to have someone who knows next to nothing about the feeling of these people, their lives and how they manage talk down the efforts we put out here at our own detriment! It is pathetic to say the least. Anybody who wishes to take us to court because we show pictures should be my guest, but while you are at it, you must come here and wend the bushes to find these people we have treated and also paid their bills and some who have had to be discharged or absconded without collecting or paying a penny, as the case may be, because they have nothing to even offer in the first place making us go into loses, to come and sign your papers before dragging us to court. You must not sit in the comfort of the city and disparage those helping to right the wrongs of our leaders of old and young in the villages in the name of being a lawyer or moralist. It is despicable and probably the first sin that opens the door of hell fire, the Nether. I remain committed to a better rural healthcare until such a time when God says it is time for me to move to the next level of my life. Until then, the rural doctor initiative still remains committed to ensuring that everyone deserves good health and, therefore, should get it. DR. Arome OKEME Founder, Rural doctor initiative.
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