• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

Nigeria’s universal healthcare drags due to weak collaborations

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 Nigeria has ambition to put its estimated 200 million populations under the universal health coverage, a target that has eluded the nation owing to weak collaborations within the healthcare sector.

Hygeia, Nigeria’s leading Health Maintenance Organisation (HMO), has called for collaborations in creating sustainable solutions that will make healthcare affordable and accessible to all Nigerians.

The call was made at a recent conference held recently in Lagos with the theme ‘Healthcare in Nigeria- Transformative Solutions.’

“Nigeria’s healthcare planning lags behind because they often lack cooperation between, or commitment from, involving doctors and administrators, which these groups sometimes conflict,”  said Olamide Okulaja, the director of advocacy and communication at the PharmAccess Foundation.

“The Hippocratic Oath, taken by the doctors forces them to focus on the patients at hand, whereas planning and control addresses the entire patient’s population.  While managers are generally dedicated to provide the best possible services, they lack the knowledge and training to make the best use of the available resources,” Okulaja said.

According to him, owing to the state of information system in the healthcare sector, crucial information required for planning and control is often not available. He noted that the problem with Nigeria is that, nobody is looking at teamwork.

The healthcare workforce is facing a critical shortfall of health professionals over the next decade as the brain drain in the sector has reached alarming proportions. Patients are facing increasing wait times, limited access to providers, reduced time with caregivers, and decreased satisfaction.

Worse still, many of the private hospitals functioning are not sustainable as they lack corporation to increase health coverage and lack the proper structure to run profitable healthcare businesses.

Speaking on the theme,  Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu ,Wife of Lagos State Governor,  said that the transformation of healthcare in Nigeria is a collective effort and that Nigerians must join hands together as individual, organizations, government, Non-Governmental Organisations and development partners to ensure that we have an effectively and efficient healthcare delivery system.

“A bad healthcare system kills talents, innovation and precious lives. We cannot be serious about developing our economy without according befitting consideration to better healthcare system.

 “As a responsible custodian of healthcare delivery in Nigeria, we must ensure excellent strength is accorded healthcare that is available and affordable,” she said.

Also speaking, Obinna Abajue,  chief executive officer (CEO), Hygeia, explained that the conference occupies a special place and it focus on the application of the issues to the everyday management of health issues in Nigeria.

Abajue added that this year’s focus condition is mental health, “We need to provide better support for mental illness in our homes, at work and in the media. More stories of suicide provide no comfort even if adequately rationalised. We can be better as a people especially if we start early.’’

At the panel discussion,the panellists say that for health care to achieve healthcare inclusion in Nigeria, it is critical we began to look at who to hold responsible and also figure out the relevance of the HMOS and the strength of the healthcare system with regulators and bringing in the bottom of the pyramid, adopt technology and make healthcare available and affordable to the people.

 

ANTHONIA OBOKOH