Today I woke up to the above screaming headline by Bukola Adebayo of the PUNCH Newspaper. At first glance, the one-sided article reeked of prejudice and malicious intent. At no point did Bukola attempt to separate facts from conjecture and comment in the entirety of her write up. If Bukola could take time to speak with the bereaved, what would it cost her to talk to at least one nurse at the health center and hear their own side of the story? what happened to Factual, accurate, balanced and fair reporting? While my heart goes out to the family of the deceased, one cannot but speak up in condemnation at the persistent attacks on the Nursing profession by the “ungentlemen”of the press.

I am really scared that another nurse is about to be sacrificed. Another scapegoating waiting to happen. How often have we been accused of negligence and malpractices in an environment that abhors proficiency? How can we give our best when the enabling environment is lacking.

Few weeks ago, it was the nurses at UPTH crucified unjustly. You would recall that after the protest on the death of a UNIPORT Student, Prof. Aaron Ojule, the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of UPTH invited the press and exonerated the hospital from the allegation of the death of the uniport undergraduate and was quoted as saying "They came here and we told them there was no space at the time they came and when the lady died, they said it was UPTH that killed her. We have always told the people that UPTH is over-subscribed. The students have alleged that we killed her, but we have no hand in her death". Yet, two nurses who were on duty that day are currently on suspension for three months without pay while waiting for the approval of the Ministry of Health on their sack.

Incidentally, the likes of Bukola have turned blind to the fiasco playing out at UPTH, they have suddenly lost their voice to the fact that the recommendations of the panel to sack two nurses who were on duty that day contradicts the earlier stance of the CMD exonerating UPTH. Totally ironic!

Now, the same scenario is about to be replayed at the Rauf Aregbesola Health Centre in Egbeda, Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos.

According to busola's article titled “Mother, Child Die Looking for Doctors”, Omowumi Shonuga was rushed to the Rauf Aregbesola Health Centre after her water had broken. In an attempt to make the health workers look bad, Busola made a huge meal of the fact that the gates where locked at 5am. She made no attempt to highlight the fact that there was no security guard in a government establishment with two female nurses on duty. I bet Busola would not agree to spend a night at the health center with the gates open at the risk of rape and robbery. It is pertinent that the public understands that considering the security situation in the country, hospital gates are locked at night to perverts, not to patients.

According to the deceased's husband "After a while a woman came out and said there was no doctor to attend to me, that I should take her to the Igando General Hospital". The public must refuse to believe the pictures the press paint about nurses and begin to take nurses at their words. PHCs work on a model of a 2-way referral system, thus time and the patient’s life would have been saved if the patient was evacuated to the General hospital as advised by the nurses. Some may argue that they should have at least given first aid care, but why waste precious time moving the patient back and forth knowing you can do so little. I can say for a fact that no nurse would be left to man a night shift if she doesn’t possess the requisite experience, competency and expertise. Nurses are the custodians of the hospital, they know their strength and limitations.

The deceased's husband was quoted as saying "it is impossible for a doctor not to be on duty in a hospital as big as this". Sadly, this is the glaring reality of our primary health care centers. These primary health centers have suffered years of government neglect and have become death traps.

Majority cannot boast of a medical doctor nor community health officer. Most lack adequate water and power supply as well as adequate sanitary toilet facilities. Majority of them lack basic equipment with no existent maintenance plan to service the available once. None can boast of 24hour Ambulance service or laboratory services. Is the nurse to be blamed for all these management ineptitudes? A situation where only two nurses are left to man an entire hospital is just not right?

Mr shonuga pleaded for a stretcher to move his wife, but the nurses said they didn’t have one. He asked for an ambulance to take her away but the nurses said they didn’t have the keys. These are pointers to the decadence at these health centers, where a simple stretcher or 24 hour ambulance service is a luxury. Everyone makes it sound so easy, but one must ask what provisions and policiies the management has in terms of patient referrals. Are the PHC ambulances expected to medevac all emergency referrals and at whose cost? Only those who work in the public sector know the answer to this question is painfully NO. It is practically not feasible considering the multiple cases the PHCs handle and the attendant cost implications.

It is beats my imagination that Mr shonuga accused the nurses of refusing to touch his wife, yet they allowed him carry her upstairs where they began stitching her cut.

These nurses are midwives for crying out loud and one can only imagine what obstetric clinical presentations was so daunting in this case that the nurses would not want to "touch his wife". I know my colleagues and beg to disagree; it’s just sad that they would never get a chance to say what really transpired that early morning.

Mr shonuga was directed to go and buy some injections and drugs that would stop the bleeding. This is totally absurd, isn’t the hospital management supposed to make provision for emergency drug store for use during emergencies like this? Is the nurse also expected to buy and stock these drugs too?

Sadly, after so much time was lost, the doctor arrived and still said the same thing the nurses said right from the beginning "take her to Igando general hospital, we cannot handle it". There is a reason we have specialist and tertiary hospitals. If the nurse says it is blue, trust me it finally turns out to be blue. The nurses at the health center exhibited a high level index of suspicion and were apt to determine early that the case was above their capacity. This deserves some recommendation to say the least.

Mrs Deola Salako the director of information at the ministry of heatlh had this to say: "an investigative panel has been set up and any one found to have contributed to the deaths would be sanctioned". Am pretty sure what she meant was "any NURSE found to be on duty that day would be SCAPEGOATED!

It is obvious that these panels are by no means investigative as they are by composition structured to target and capture a sacrificial nurse with the sole intention of appeasing the public and deflecting the searchlight from the decay and wroth in the health sector.

Like I have always written the likes of Bukola should channel her journalistic skills to highlighting the need for increased political will in the health sector. She should use her column in the PUNCH Newspaper to demand for increased funding/ intersectoral collaboration, provision of Technical supervision, manpower management and an improved 2-way referral system in the nation’s primary healthcare centers.

Someone needs to blame the government for not living up to its responsibilities of providing adequate facilities in the public health sector rather than the blame game and scapegoating of Nigerian nurses.