In line with its commitment to resuscitate 10, 000 Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) across wards in Nigeria, the federal government has urged Tertiary healthcare institutions across the nation to look more in the area of Public Private Partnership as a necessary tool for more development. Noting that the paradigm shift does not entail that tertiary healthcare institutions will be totally abandoned, Ehanire pointed out that about 80% of the Nigerian populace currently lack healthcare as a result of neglect of the PHCs which was supposed to cater for their health needs. "As it is at the moment, 80% of resources in the healthcare are going to tertiary institutions despite the fact that tertiary institutions take care of 20% of the healthcare needs which means that about 80% of Nigerians are excluded from healthcare.
"Government is focusing revitalizing Primary Health-care so that Nigerians at the grassroots level can also have a little bit of something; they are provided basic healthcare that will include a lot of basic medi-cines, vaccination, treatment for basic things like malaria, di-arrhoea and provision of skilled birth attendants and the focus is to reduce the very appalling health indices that we see on newspapers."
The minister lamented how indices of Nigeria compared to other African countries are almost disgraceful, and how the country was losing more people in childbearing, stressed that "the primary healthcare, one in a ward, will be almost 10, 000 and will be provided with water, light from solar energy, skilled birth attendants, nurses to deliver basic healthcare and with that alone, we hope to crash the indices but this does not mean that care at tertiary levels will be neglected." Earlier in his speech, the Medical Director, NOHIL, Dr. Rotimi Odunubi said the commissioned projects — the Amenity Executive Clinic, new NHIS clinic and new admin-istrative building were in line with the hospital's agenda of redefining healthcare through quality services.
"The Amenity Executive Clinic is to provide convenient treatment for individuals who do not wish to spend too much time in line to access care; New NHIS Clinic was built to meet up with NHIS standard and has in it a labour room, consulting rooms, admission wards, Phar-macy, Laboratory and offices; while the new Administration building will provide condu-cive office space for staff and facilitate smooth administrative functions in a safe, secure and serene environment." The MD also ceased the op-portunity to remind the minister of 7 pending development projects at the hospital that needed government attention which his team already showed the minister during the facility inspection tour, pointing out that completion of the projects would further enhance health-care delivery in the hospital.
Source: MWN
