African Leaders and Foreign Medical Care

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt


That the state of medical care in many African countries is abysmal can hardly be denied. This state of affairs has been compounded by the spread of malaria and HIV and AIDS. Rather than struggling to improve the situation of medical care in their countries, African leaders have learned to rely on foreign entities to do this for them. Even more remarkable is the fact that many of these leaders have no properly equipped medical facility that may cater for their health in their own countries . That is why the late Omar Bongo who was President of  Gabon, one of the oil-rich countries in Africa, died in a hospital in Spain. When Umaru Yar'Adua, the president of Nigeria got seriously ill last November, he was taken to Saudi Arabia for treatment. Presently, government-run mosques in Egypt are praying for the health of President Hosni Mubarak, who is is in Germany for treatment.

Some African leaders apparently see no need to improve the state of healthcare in their own countries since they can simply fly to foreign countries when they get ill. In order to make them improve the state of healthcare in their countries, perhaps it would be wise for some national constitutions to make it illegal for presidents to receive medical care in a foreign country. If an African president falls ill even while on an official visit to a foreign country, they will only need to be stabilized and flown back home for full treatment. This may be a radical idea but if it is stipulated in the law of a country, it may make a president to focus on improving the state of healthcare in their own country. At the very least, it may force a president to improve the system that takes care of their own health, rather than relying on foreign healthcare facilities. Who knows, this step may be what is needed for African countries to begin to come to themselves.