African Leaders Please Die In Your Countries

This has got to be the funniest headline I have read this
week, but the truth is the appeal is NECESSARY…lol. So I found this piece on The Observer written by its editorial and cannot but help say they are on point and something needs to be done about our health sector NOW. So I join them in saying African leaders, please
die in your countries.

Just a few days after Zambia celebrated her 50th
independence anniversary last month, their president, Michael Sata, died in a
London hospital, where he had been admitted with an unspecified illness.

A lot of attention has been paid to the man who has
succeeded him, Guy Scott, a white man, because of his skin. Few people have
noted the embarrassing irony of leaders of ‘independent’ African countries
dying in the lands of former colonial masters, 50 years since independence. Continue…

Eleven African leaders have died in office since 2008 and
majority of them it was in a hospital abroad or soon after arriving home.
Zambia’s Levy Mwanawasa (France) and now Michael Sata (UK), Ethiopia’s Meles
Zenawi (Belgium), Omar Bongo (Spain), Ghana’s John Atta Mills and Nigeria’s
Umaru Yar’Adua all fit in that category.

Ideally, the poor health infrastructure in most African
countries is the reason African leaders, who are ironically charged with
improving these facilities, can’t use them. But it’s also true that African
leaders are very secretive about their health; and so, being hospitalised
abroad helps them to keep their illness secret and thus their power intact.

It’s a shame that a leader can be in charge of a country for
20 years and still fail to create conditions that would enable him or her to
get medical attention at home. Perhaps it’s because their own health is never
really at stake as they have taxpayers’ money at their disposal in case they
need even the simplest treatment abroad, while their poor citizens are left to
their own devices.

Throwing mega parties to celebrate independence under such
circumstances is the worst form of self-deception. African leaders who are
still living need to restore some pride to this dear continent by establishing
or facilitating the establishment of medical facilities that are capable of not
only handling their health needs but also that of all their people.

That way, even an Ebola outbreak would not be as devastating
as it has been in West Africa as there would be a fairly robust health system
in place to manage every health challenge.