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Nigerian doctor makes COM launching pad for medical outreach in her homeland
By David J. Craig
As the host of a weekly call-in television show in Lagos, Nigeria, physician
Lisa Onyemobe provided advice on how to prevent common ailments such as
malaria, respiratory infection, and tuberculosis. Aimed at educating mothers
on child health-care issues, the show featured Onyemobe's fellow doctors
as guests. To protect against TB, they reminded callers, get your child
vaccinated. All it takes to ensure that diarrhea does not become life-threatening,
they instructed, is a salt-sugar solution that takes seconds to prepare.
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| Physician Lisa Onyemobe (COM'03) is earning a master's degree in health communications at the College of Communication so she can educate people in her native Nigeria about health-care options. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky | |
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Onyemobe (COM'03) was often amazed at parents' ignorance of such simple
precautions. "Even if they had heard about the salt-sugar solution,
they might not know how to make it," she says. "Or they might
not have known whether to trust it, and might be taking their child to
an alternative healer."
Onyemobe's experience on Mother and Child, a 20-minute, prime-time show
she hosted on Nigerian national television beginning in 1994 and both
hosted and coproduced from 1997 to 2000, convinced her that lack of information
among ordinary citizens was a key obstacle to improving public health.
But as her commitment to the goals of the show grew, so did her frustration.
A full-time general practitioner at a busy government health clinic in
Lagos, a city of seven million, Onyemobe didn't have the time or the means
to execute her ideas about outreach efforts that might make a difference.
So in 2001, she became the first doctor to enroll in BU's interdisciplinary
master's program in health communications, which prepares students for
a wide variety of communications positions in the health-care industry.
Students take courses at the College of Communication, the School of Management,
and the School of Public Health, in subjects ranging from public relations
to health-care marketing to epidemiology. Onyemobe is determined to use
the training to educate Nigerians about health choices in their country.
Nigerians, only 57 percent of whom are literate, face complicated options.
Religiously based healers and herbalists are prevalent in Nigeria, where
most people live in rural areas and have no health insurance. Such healers
are cheaper than medical doctors, Onyemobe says, and there is a general
mistrust of modern health care, but maybe most important to their popularity,
they are allowed by law to advertise their services. Medical doctors cannot
advertise, forbidden by legislation rooted in a British custom that assumes
reputable doctors have no reason to do so.
"Nigerians make rational health-care choices based on the information
available to them," she says. "What do you expect from illiterate
people who see flashy TV ads made by alternative healers saying, 'Come
in, we'll cure your ills and you can pay us later'? Nigerians have a lot
of information competing for their attention, and they often don't have
the ability or the means to check their options against one another and
make a careful decision about what is the best thing to do."
Among Onyemobe's goals when she returns to Nigeria next summer is to educate
women about antenatal care options. She says that many Nigerian women
are afraid to visit hospitals when pregnant because of stories they hear
about botched caesarian sections, which generally are safe in Nigerian
hospitals. The country's government hospitals and more expensive private
hospitals are certainly safer than the ramshackle birthing rooms set up
in rural homes, says Onyemobe, which sometimes serve as many as a dozen
women at a time. "Many women give birth in unsanitary conditions,
with the help of people who are poorly trained," she says. "If
something goes wrong, the women must be brought to a hospital, where a
caesarian section then is very risky because the doctors know nothing
about the history of the woman's pregnancy."
Last May, Onyemobe spent two weeks at the World Health Organization (WHO)
headquarters in Geneva, researching the link between HIV infection and
the onset of tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa. The fellowship was sponsored
by WHO and BU's Institute for Analytic Journalism. She also is a recipient
of the John and Kathryn Silber Book Award, which is given by the BU Women's
Guild.
Onyemobe, who is on a two-year educational leave from her job and plans
to return to television, is determined to organize educational programs
in Nigeria that combine the use of mass media with community-based activism.
"What I've learned at BU is that health care must be marketed as
a commodity," she says. "I believe programs that will change
people's behavior in Nigeria will have to involve people from the communities
we try to reach, who, with some training, can pass out information in
marketplaces and demonstrate safe health practices.
"If we show people what's available to them, and show them the pros
and cons of different methods in that way," she says, "Nigerians
will trust that. They will remember it."
For more information about COM's health communications program, visit bu.edu/com/health.
20 September 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations