DASHED HOPES

The more your hopes for a better Nigeria rise the further they're quickly dashed.

You go to the hospital, as a good citizen, you dutifully join the queue to see a doctor, you manage to see him after several hours, then he tells you to go back and get authorization code from National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS. If he trusts you, he may sympathize with you and prescribe the drugs for you on the understanding that you'll get the authorization code. You then go back to the NHIS desk officer to get the authorization code. You spend several hours again before it comes to your turn, only for the desk officer to tell you that your Health Maintenance Organization, HMO, has not responded to his calls and messages. You then proceed and appeal to the pharmacist to allow you purchase the drugs before the HMO is contacted. There, also, you spend some time on the queue and If he trusts you, he sends you to the cashier to make the payment. Meanwhile, some of the drugs aren't even available in the hospital, in spite of the fact that you're under NHIS. At the cashier's cubicle, you join yet another  queue. When it's your turn, the computer goes on the blink...

Phew! What a country... You've got to be an angel not to blow your top and make a scene... What a cumbersome procedure! Can't the hospital and NHIS work out a simpler arrangement?