• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Nigeria should embrace delivering quality healthcare services to undeserved villages – PDI MD

healthcare services

In a bid to resuscitate healthcare service delivery for the improvement of Nigerian, John Iguve, managing director, Pre Diagnosis International (PDI) has advised that Nigeria’s dwindling economic fortunes which impacts availability of funds for developmental efforts dictates that the best model the country needs to embrace is one that can deliver quality healthcare services to the remotest, undeserved villages across the length and breadth of Nigeria by leveraging technology to maximize the scarce human and operational resources for health through effective and efficient deployment.

Iguve made this known as a follow up to the recently announced plan by the Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PSHAN) to build new PHCs across the 774 LGAs of the country.

PSHAN recently announced that, under its Adopt-a-Health-Facility Programme (ADHFP), it had designed a plan that “entails delivering one Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) in each of Nigeria’s 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) at global standards”.

While lauding PSHAN for coming out to help, Iguve said the focus of building PHCs, in the light of the country’s past experience, could not offer an innovative solution to the existing challenges of providing efficient healthcare services, especially in rural, hard-to-reach areas.

According to him, “modern day public healthcare is efficient only when health services can reach the hard to reach areas, when location, economic and social status do not dictate access to quality health services, when the have and have not have equal access to basic healthcare services and only when all people and communities can use the promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative health services they need in sufficient quantity without exposing them to financial hardship as declared by the World Health Organisation”.

He declared that Nigeria is in a race against time due to various global forecasts on the exponential nature of the country’s population growth as the country’s population is expected to hit the half a billion mark in the next thirty years.

“For us at Pre Diagnosis, we have achieved remarkable progress in our burning desire to harness modern technology to effectively distribute quality total healthcare to two million vulnerable Nigerians annually, in a cost-effective way that maximizes the scarce human resources.

“At the center of this breakthrough is an ultra-modern technological platform known as the PDI TeleHealth HUB that was designed to provide a holistic solution to the identified gaps in the country’s healthcare space, particularly in the underserved areas,” he said.

He further said that the hub is connected to the expansive PDI telehealth central control room where doctors are available 24/7 to micromanage these hubs.

“The result is delivery of continuous medical services on the ground within a community (remotely) by our medical doctors, leveraging technology”, he further explained.

Iguve also stated that PDI has harnessed technology to develop an app that allows individuals to consult and receive wholesale treatment for many minor and major health challenges from doctors via the cell phone without physically visiting the hospital.

He cautioned that such pooled funds should be judiciously deployed to deliver medical services to the most vulnerable in the society, most effectively and efficiently to achieve the best health outcomes through the provision of sustainable, affordable healthcare services all year-round.

“Tele-healthcare which is a growing ark of Telemedicine has become a cheaper alternative for most countries that desire a radical solution to their public healthcare delivery challenges. This is the direction in which Nigeria must move”, he concluded.