He has been in this country for over 30 years, healing the sick and saving lives. Though he dines with the upper class, who forms his clientele, he still retains his common touch. Dr. Shabilhu Hassan is a Nigerian of Indian origin. EZRA IJIOMA spoke with the Nigerianised doctor recently in his office in Maitama.
“I am a resident in Nigeria for over 35 years, though I am Indian by birth. I trained as a doctor at Ahmadu Bello University,” he told LEADERSHIP WEEKEND at his hospital in the high brow area of Maitama, Abuja. Dr. Hassan comes with a rich academic pedigree.
He is a former Principal Medical Officer of the University of Maiduguri Health Services and a former Head, Accident and Emergency Department of University of Maiduguri.
Why school in Nigeria and not in India? Hassan answered, “My dad came to Nigeria in 1972 and he retired as a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maiduguri. We all came with him and all our early education were here in Nigeria.” A successful physician, Hassan has come to find home in Nigeria and has friends across the length and breadth of the country.
“I used to travel with my friends across Nigeria in the 80s. We will drive from the North to the West and visit friends in the East. But that is not possible now.”
On how much he is enjoying Nigeria, he said, “Nigeria is home for me. All my friends are here and my parents and siblings are here too. My wife was born in Nigeria though she is Indian. Her parents came to Nigeria in the 60s. So this is where home is.”
Dr. Hassan says he misses India though he is continuously in touch with his families there. “I have always visited India regularly, and sometimes, twice in a year we go there. So we are as much at home as we are there as we are here.”
As a proprietor of a private hospital, Hassan said the need to be close to his patients prompted him to set up Dr. Hassan’s Clinic & Diagnostic Centre in 2005. He said, “When I was in the private sector, I had many clients and moved around a lot.
This was in the 90s. After that, I decided that if I were at a place rather than move around, my patients would be able to come to me. Abuja is central and I decided to settle here. You can get here within an hour from any part of the country if you’re travelling by air.”
The level of patronage?? He answers, “It has been huge. When I set up the clinic in 2005, I was not thinking of setting up something this big. My idea was to set up something where my patients could come around and I attend to them.
But you know, with the kind of response we’ve been getting with many coming for specialised treatment and companies coming for retainer, we keep having a growing number of staff.
Gradually, the pressure continued to increase, and finally in 2010, I decided to build this hospital so that people could come to me. Daily, people come from all over the country to be treated. Some of them just fly in during the weekend, do the necessary tests, and by Sunday or Monday, they are back to where they came from.”
LEADERSHIP WEEKEND gathered that the success of this Nigerianised Indian sojourn into private medical practice has been the personalised form of service in the hospital. “We try to keep the African culture in mind because of the northern Nigeria where we operate.
In our hospital, we have minimum paper work and you have hundreds of people who come for emergency treatment. We focus much on diagnosis. We have a very advanced laboratory with very qualified staff.
We have brought in very senior doctors from India who are working for us. We have a blend of good Nigerian doctors and good Indian doctors. And there are doctors from other nationalities.”
And challenges faced?? “I think the government can make it easier for the private sector to thrive. We don’t have much problem since this is a very big hospital, a 65-bed hospital. Basically, government can help the young doctors to set up hospitals. In most countries, the private sector is getting stronger. In India, it has become very strong in the last 10 years.
“Very young doctors who want to set up hospitals should be helped with soft loans. Government should make it easier for them with less bureaucracy. That is what will form the backbone of the health care system in the country.
Right now it is very difficult for a young doctor who just graduated to set up a hospital. Just the rent alone in Abuja will scare him away. You see, private clinic helps the government carry the health burden of the people,” Hassan answered.
However, if the medical centre is this good, why do Nigerians still flood overseas for quality medical care? Why the growth in medical tourism? Hassan replies that his ultimate objective is to stop the movement of Nigerians abroad for medical treatment.
He said, “My idea is that most of those things [treatment] can be taken care of in this environment. We have very good Nigerian doctors. Nigerian standard of medical education is very good and recognised all over the world. I heard somewhere that there are over 30,000 Nigerian doctors practising in the United States, alone not to talk of other places.
“These doctors are in very important positions. So Nigerian doctors are good and my idea has been, instead of people going from Abuja to New Delhi for treatment, we would have people coming to Abuja from Niamey [capital of Niger Republic], Douala [a city in Cameroun] and others for treatment.”
Is it working? With a broad smile through a fine-chiselled set of teeth, Hassan said, “It is working because a lot of cases are coming here and I am also the Panel Doctor for the Indian High Commission in Nigeria. I have been part and parcel of patients going from here to India for treatment. I know that a huge number of people are going and a number of those people are now coming to our hospital.”
LEADERSHIP WEEKEND asked the doctor who had spent all his working days in Nigeria to assess the nation’s health system, and this is his candid view: “I have seen Nigerian health system as a child when I was in secondary school.
It was one of the best health systems in the world then and Nigerian economy was very strong. Almost everything was free in the government hospitals and the system was good because it was manned by good professionals.?
“Somewhere along the line, with the decline in the economy, like was happening all over the world, things deteriorated and the quality of health services was affected. There was massive brain drain as Nigerian doctors went overseas, and so things did go down for some time. Now, the system is picking up with the support of the private sector.
You see, I have always believed that the private sector should develop the health sector. We should not always expect government to do everything for us.
“Government can do that to an extent, but if you want to have a very advanced health system, it is not realistic that government will do everything. Government will provide the framework for the community health care, general hospitals and teaching hospitals, but when it comes to advanced specialised medical care, the private sector has to come in. Government is encouraging the private sectors and the private sector is getting stronger and stronger.”
Any future plans? “Yes”, he glowed. “We are building another hospital within the town. It is going to be a 300-bed hospital and is going to be a subsidiary of Dr. Hassan’s Medical Centre and Diagnostics and we are going to call it Indian-Nigerian Friendship Hospital. It is going to be one of the biggest medical facilities of its kind in West Africa.
We are going to have all the specialities there and we will start doing things like heart surgery and hip transplant. When the facility is ready, there won’t be any need for people to travel out for medical treatment.”
Given the kind of investment he is making in Nigeria, does he have any plans to go back to India one day? “Very unlikely,” Dr. Hassan answered.? “This is because I have been here all along.
Every two months I am in India, and we have a large family that owns lands in the last 150 years. So we all get together there once in a year as a big extended family. Travelling to New Delhi by air is the same as travelling to Lagos from Abuja by road.” ????????