In a world of grand ambitions and flying air ambulances, Dr. Nana Onisarotu wants to talk about something far more fundamental: the ground beneath our feet. Literally.
The medical doctor, entrepreneur, and founder of a growing emergency response ecosystem sits down for a conversation that is part confession, part lecture, and part call to arms. She is a woman who left Nigeria at 15, studied medicine in war-torn Ukraine, earned a master’s in global health in Amsterdam, and tried and failed to love living in the UK. She came back to Nigeria to build.
Now, she runs three businesses simultaneously: an ambulance company born in the chaos of COVID-19, a tech platform called Rescue Core to aggregate emergency services, and an ICU unit run in partnership with a government hospital. Her mission is simple but brutally difficult: to get Nigerians the right care, at the right place, in the right time.
And she has a message for everyone: Prepare. Because the system will not save you if you haven’t planned for the worst.
The 70,000 Naira Problem
The first hard truth Dr. Nana offers is about money. Healthcare, she notes, is never cheap.
“No matter the healthcare system that you’re in, health care is not cheap. Somebody has to pay for it. It’s either the government is paying for it or you’re paying for it or you’ve paid for it in advance with healthcare insurance.”
In Nigeria, where the minimum wage struggles to keep pace with inflation fuel prices have “doubled very recently” a basic ambulance transfer costs at least 70,000 Naira. That is an entire month’s salary for many.
“When you consider minimum wage, it is expensive,” she admits. But she is quick to add that technology and aggregation can bend the cost curve. Her platform, Rescue Core, locates the nearest ambulance to a patient, potentially cutting a 70,000 Naira ride to 30,000 Naira. “If an ambulance is just five minutes away from you, you can even pay 30,000 Naira.”
The long-term solution, she insists, is health insurance adoption. “The beauty of healthcare insurance is that it’s not what you put inside the pot that you get out when you need it.”
We Know 911, But Not Our Own Number
Why don’t Nigerians call for an ambulance in an emergency? Dr. Nana has a stark observation: cultural conditioning from American movies.
“Nigerians know 911, but we don’t know our own number. It’s because they have been taught that this is the path to follow. We know 911 not because we’ve lived in America, but because we’ve watched the North American movies.”
In a crisis, people call relatives, pastors, or imams. They start prayer sessions. Or they jump into a car and race to the nearest hospital often the wrong one.
She recalls a painful case: a patient with a stroke who insisted on going to a private facility of her choice, despite the ambulance crew advising that the hospital lacked the necessary care. Three days later, the same patient turned up in Dr. Nana’s ICU, unconscious and beyond surgical help.
“We had a chance to help this patient,” she says quietly. “What could I have done differently?”
That question haunts her.
‘You Cannot Force a Patient’
The interview takes a raw turn when the host shares his own traumatic memory: a middle-aged man who walked into a hospital, grew increasingly frantic for attention, was delayed because no bed was available, and eventually flatlined after a series of involuntary spasms, leaving his 11-year-old son screaming.
Dr. Nana listens, then diagnoses the systemic rot beneath the tragedy.
“There’s a huge pressure on secondary hospitals. Imagine one doctor seeing more than 100 patients in a morning. By the 50th patient, the empathy in that doctor will leave his body.”
She points to the collapse of primary healthcare centers. Nobody knows the nearest Primary Health Centre (PHC) to their house. Everyone shows up at general hospitals, overwhelming staff, depleting resources, and burning out the very people meant to save lives.
“At some point, that doctor is not going to have the sense of urgency you want. He’s been on his feet for many hours. So he’s not at his best.”
And when that doctor earns 300,000 Naira a month while a content creator makes millions, she asks a pointed question: “How do you want to keep the doctor in the hospital?”
Air Ambulances? Let’s Walk First
When asked about the allure of air ambulances, Dr. Nana is characteristically pragmatic. She remembers a government flirtation with the idea and dismisses it as premature.
“The cost of buying one air ambulance can buy up to 100 basic ground ambulances. We don’t have enough ground ambulances. We don’t even have places to land the bloody helicopters.”
Her priority is optimization: getting existing ground ambulances to work smarter, not dreaming about flying over the problem.
“If the ground is not working, where you are flying to and from will not be possible.”
The Wedding, The Fall, And The Unseen Death
Perhaps the most profound moment she shares is not from a hospital but from a wedding. She was there as a guest, with her ambulance team on standby. Then came the call: “Is there a doctor?”
A member of the family an elderly aunt of the groom had collapsed. By the time Dr. Nana reached the back, a crowd had already overcrowded the ambulance. Before the vehicle could even leave the venue, the woman was unresponsive.
The wedding carried on. Nobody told the couple that someone had just died.
“For weeks, it kept on going in my mind,” she says. “What could have prevented that? How do you stay prepared at every point in time? Anything can happen. When death is going to come, it’s not going to come knocking.”
A Doctor’s Plea: Prepare
For all her frustration with the system the brain drain of doctors, the lack of political will for right-of-way laws, the public’s distrust Dr. Nana refuses to give up. She believes more doctors will stay, and even come back from abroad, bringing external wisdom.
But her overriding message to every Nigerian watching or listening is simple and urgent:
“Prepare for emergencies. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Even me as a doctor, I have conversations with my doctor friends: ‘If you had a stroke now, where would you go? If you had a fracture, where would you go?’ We don’t think about these things because we assume it should not happen to me. But prepare for it.”
She advises everyone to save a number, know the nearest secondary care hospital, and understand what an ambulance actually does it provides care during transport, not just a faster ride.
For those in need of her services, the line is open: 091555640.
“It’s not just about getting there fast,” she says. “It’s about getting to the right place on time.”
Source: The Podcast Network – YouTube
