In providing affordable and accessible Primary Health Care system in the country, the federal government is brainstorming and finding suitable ways in which every Nigerian will be exposed to basic health care facilities at almost no cost and further discourage medical tourism. This will include collaborating with states and local governments and ensuring that all tiers of government put in resources and build primary health care agencies. This was stated, Tuesday, by the minister of health, Prof Isaac Adewole at the first annual lecture of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and with the topic “Primary Health Care. Realities, Challenges, and the Way Forward.”“Health is on the concurrent list. The implication of that is that we all must work. We will collaborate with the Nigeria governors forum and will make sure that state governors put in life, money and will need to establish primary healthcare development agencies that will work and ensure the centres at the state and local governments are functioning. When we all work together, then we can talk of one healthcare system for Nigeria that is accountable, accessible and affordable. “For a very long time, emphasis has been on tertiary health care and that to me is not the face of healthcare in this country. Tertiary health care only handles 15% of healthcare in this country but consumes so much of our resources. No wonder over the years, we have made serious and straineous attempt to refocus.”
“We will pay attention to ante-natal care, HIV tesing and ensure that they can treat malaria and relieve the secondary and tertiary tiers of the burden they currently face. They are overburdened and there is absolutely no reason why a Nigerian with diarorea will go to a teaching hospital. There is no reason for why a Nigerian with malaria will go to a teaching hospital. These should be handled at the basic level which is the primary health care.”
“We will also ensure that we have a good data capturing system so that we will know who is doing what. We will also move from measuring the performance of the health sector by the amount of money we put into the sector. We need to move beyond the input and find out what the monies have done. How many people did we vaccinate? How many pregnant women did we look at? How many babies did we deliver? When we look at the process and invariably the outcome, then we can boast of a healthcare system that is functional. We will partner with state and local governments as we cannot do it alone.”
He added that the teaching hospitals, will not be abandoned “because that is the face but we will adopt more of the public private partnership approach. The private sector is not yet efficient and so we will partner with them. The untimate goal is for the services to work and we will emply the efficiencies of the private sector to make them work and drive this agenda.”
Source:Leadership Online:
