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From Sola Ojo, Kaduna
A former Director in the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), Pharmacist Zainab Ujudud Shariff, has called on President Bola Tinubu to give close, strong, sincere and genuine attention to Nigeria’s health sector leveraging on the existing research outcomes currently gathering dust in the Ministry.
To her, the sector can be repositioned for greater effectiveness in delivering healthcare services to Nigerians through a holistic innovative approach and not the usual disjointed way of thinking and actions.
If that is considered, she’s convinced that it would make the Country’s health system function adequately enough to enhance the well-being of Nigerians, stop medical tourism and reduce brain drain in the sector.
She said one way of thinking out of the box is to walk away from “blindly accepting and implementing” ideas wholesale from international health bodies, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), without subjecting such ideas to scrutiny and domestication.
“By thinking out of the box, Nigeria may in a matter of a decade achieve comprehensive health care for every citizen. Health care for all is defined as providing every citizen with a complete state of physical, mental, social and even spiritual being, not the absence of diseases alone.
“The Federal Ministry of Health as currently constituted is too unwieldy, suffers from poor budgetary financing, overburdened with responsibilities of managing primary, secondary, and tertiary health care services, to achieve all its objectives. No doubt, the Ministry has qualified and experienced personnel in all the relevant fields, but they are overstretched.
“However, the Ministry can be split into two by curving out a Ministry for Preventive Health Care Services from it to manage the health environment, climate health issues, improved potable water supply, better diet, and nutrition and hygiene.
“The Tinubu administration ought to encourage and strengthen the spread of health sector-related education, improve technology in the sector, and accord greater funding for research in health leveraging the Country’s abundant human and natural resources”, she said.
She continued, “it may be imperative to pay more attention to Primary Health Care (PHC) and urgently redefine responsibilities for the sub-sector, especially at subnational levels. It is equally desirable to address the issue of a lack of qualified staff to meet the needed minimum standards at the PHC.
“The tertiary health care sub-sector ought to be reorganised by replacing Chief Medical Directors (CMDs) with financial experts or qualified Hospital Administrators. Accountability of revenue generated by tertiary and secondary public healthcare facilities should be improved.
“The need to establish specialized regional hospitals to cater for diseases and cases prevalent in each of the six geo-political zones is a worthy idea for exploration. This can reduce foreign medical tourism and waste of foreign exchange.
“As the nation moves toward making Health Care Services available, accessible, and affordable to meet the health care needs of the majority of Nigerians, the National Health Insurance Care Services (NHICS) should be adjusted and open enough to provide access to all patients that require health care services regardless of their financial circumstances or where they live in the country.
“Many practical ideas have been generated, collated, and documented from 1999 to date to guide effective implementation of the health sector reforms in the country. These documents are gathering dust in the Federal Ministry of Health. The Bola Ahmed Tinubu presidency may consider mining them and implementing their key elements to trigger off a holistic re-arrangement of the health sector in Nigeria”, she advised.
