Consolidating Lagos health sector reforms

The public health sector has no doubt enjoyed tremendous goodwill from successive administrations in Lagos State, especially in the current political dispensation, through various progressive health care policies. Consequently, Lagosians have enjoyed access to qualitative health care, irrespective of cultural, financial and political factors. Through the Eko Free Health Mission, the Lagos State government has been providing free screenings, consultations and treatments for various ailments, as well as surgeries. The mission covers primary, secondary and tertiary levels of medical care. The most important goal of the programme is the shift in medical attention to the grassroots, especially to the young and aged, as well as those citizens who, due to financial constraints and transportation, cannot access government health facilities.

The health missions were deliberately targeted at tackling the high rate of poverty that prevents the citizens from accessing quality health care services, thereby reducing high mortality rates resulting from non-communicable but silent killers such as hypertension, diabetes and malaria as well as those disease conditions that require surgeries, like the goitre surgery carried out in Badagry when survey carried out indicated that the ailment is common in that part of the state. Therefore, it would gladden the hearts of Lagosians if these missions continue in order to reduce the burdens on health facilities and also allow grassroots dwellers who ordinarily cannot access secondary and tertiary health care enjoy the dividends of democracy.

Through the upgrading, revitalization and rehabilitation of the near comatose primary health care system to run 24-hour shifts with full complements of staff, the citizens now patronize the primary health care centres for minor ailments that were hitherto managed at the secondary and tertiary health facilities (general and teaching hospitals). This has largely reduced the number of patients in the aforementioned facilities, thereby giving them room to carry out their specialized duties for which they were set up. The present administration under the leadership of Akinwunmi Ambode should endeavour to flag off more Primary Health Care centres that were already upgraded and also facilitate the upgrading of new ones in order to achieve the goal of having at least one flagship PHC centre per local government and local council development area.

In addition, the administration should make the issue of provision of funding of the PHC centres by the LGAs a priority, as stipulated in the newly passed National Health Act. This would make the facilities more vibrant and the toast of the citizens of the state as far as the provision of qualitative health care at the grassroots is concerned.

The Lagos State government adopted the health vision enunciated in the Millennium Development Goals as the state’s minimum starting point for the health sector. In realization of the enormity of the problem of high maternal and infants mortality rates, coupled with the attention the problem is getting globally, the state government evolved the Integrated Maternal and Child Centres Policy in line with the MDGs of the United Nations. The state went a step further to construct and commission for use Maternal and Child Care centres equipped with the latest medical and other facilities to reduce maternal and child mortality level to zero and to enhance and ensure optimal performance across the state. The centres are located in the premises of the General Hospitals at Surulere, Ifako-Ijaye, Amuwo-Odofin, Ikorodu, Isolo, Eti-Osa, Ajeromi/Ifelodun and Alimosho.

However, in order to tackle this problem headlong, it behoves on the new administration to build more of these facilities in all the LGAs of the state for the use of all citizens.

Child survival intervention, especially immunization, apart from constituting part of the rights of a child, has been acknowledged as a veritable strategy towards achieving the MDGs. This is the reason the state government conceived the idea of National Immunization Plus Days (NIPDs) which it has been adhering strictly to. It has equally gone further by working with neighbouring Ogun State and the Republic of Benin, along the border towns, in finding more effective ways to eradicate the scourge of poliomyelitis in the two countries. These interventions and collaborations should continue in order to achieve the desired result of zero death and disabilities from preventable childhood diseases

Lagos State government through the Limb Deformity Corrective Surgery Programme has been giving a new lease of life to patients who suffer deformity as a result of poliomyelitis, club foot, knock knees and bow legs. Furthermore, surgeries for babies and children with cleft lips and palates were carried out free of charge. The programme was conceived as a poverty alleviation programme to ameliorate the sufferings of the people, particularly the indigent as most children and others are from very poor families who cannot afford the cost of surgery. The programme, which is run in line with the Free Health Policy of the state government, has recorded lots of successes and as such has been attracting people from other states in the federation. These kind gestures should go on in order to give a sense of belongings to the citizens.

Another noble health intervention of the state government which the present administration should key into is the Eko Free Malaria Programme. Being a state surrounded by water, the state government, realizing the threat malaria poses, put in place the necessary machinery to tackle the scourge of malaria in the state through the provision of each household with at least two Long Lasting Insecticide Nets (LLIN). In addition, the state government adopted a policy whereby adults, children and pregnant women reporting with malaria in any health facility in the state are given free treatment under this programme.

These and more are some of the giant strides of the past administrations in the health sector which the present administration is expected to surpass in order to debunk the claim of Christopher A. Viehbacher, the CEO of Sanofi, a pharmaceutical company in New York, that “If you think about how healthcare is delivered, it’s on an ad hoc basis. Someone comes into a hospital, someone comes into a pharmacy, someone comes into a doctor. But beyond those touch points, the patients are on their own. There’s no real continuity of care.”

BILKIS BAKARE

Bakare is of the Features Unit, Ministry of Information & Strategy, Alausa, Ikeja.