1 month ago
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By Chioma Obinna
Sixty-five years aft Nigeria gained independence, the country’s healthcare strategy continues to look important challenges, the Chairman of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Lagos State Branch, Dr. Sahedd Babajide, has said.
Speaking connected the persistent shortcomings successful the sector, Babajide noted that contempt decades of reforms and investments, Nigeria’s wellness strategy remains underdeveloped, struggling to supply equitable entree to prime care.
A large concern, helium said, is the ongoing encephalon drain, oregon “Japa syndrome,” with healthcare professionals leaving for amended opportunities abroad. Babajide warned that reversing this inclination requires capable remuneration, non-taxable telephone work allowances, robust payment packages, training, research, and infrastructural development, alongside creating a conducive moving situation for aesculapian personnel.
Healthcare financing remains a captious challenge. Babajide revealed that national and authorities governments allocate lone 4–6% of their budgets to health, acold beneath the 15% people acceptable successful the 2001 Abuja Declaration. Funds are often misdirected to “elephant projects” with small interaction connected the populace.
He besides highlighted the neglect of superior healthcare, noting that anemic superior attraction undermines the improvement of secondary and tertiary healthcare services. Structural deficiencies, mediocre equipment, and inadequate facilities make an situation that is unfavorable for some healthcare providers and patients.
Babajide lamented that Nigeria is poorly prepared for emergencies specified arsenic epidemics and earthy disasters, and that aesculapian tourism continues to drain resources owed to minimal governmental volition to amended home healthcare.
To code these challenges, Babajide called for:
Standardisation and betterment of primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare systems
Proper healthcare financing, including fund allocations, prudent management, and transparent procurement and auditing
Clear vocation progression for healthcare workers and appointments of competent leaders successful wellness institutions
Construction of Infectious Disease Hospitals (IDHs) and Trauma Centres successful each authorities and the FCT
Development of multi-specialty hospitals for pediatrics, renal care, cardiac, cancer, and neurosurgery
Strengthening the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to heighten sum and work quality
Focusing connected Lagos State, Babajide highlighted the request to amended remuneration for healthcare workers, reinstate pre-April 2025 wage scales, instrumentality non-taxable telephone work allowances, grow superior healthcare centers (PHCs), and prosecute capable staff. He besides called for addressing furniture abstraction shortages, improving the referral system, and constructing much wide hospitals successful areas specified arsenic Ojo, Alimosho, Epe, Ajah, Ikorodu, and Oshodi.
He recommended reviewing the 2006 Lagos State Health Sector Reform Law and holding a Lagos State Health Summit to collaboratively tackle systemic issues.
Babajide concluded: “If we privation the wellness strategy to enactment efficaciously and efficiently successful this large country, indispensable reforms indispensable beryllium taken seriously, backed by governmental volition and commitment.”
The station 65 Years On: Lagos NMA warns Nigeria’s wellness strategy inactive struggles to deliver appeared archetypal connected Vanguard News.
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