2020 Agenda for health sector: Dr Faduyile implores FG to invest more fund on health
– Steve Ovirih .
The President of Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Dr. Dayo Faduyile has called on Federal Government to take the health concern of Nigerians seriously in the new year, urging the government to focus on the need to make the primary healthcare facilities across the country to function optimally in year 2020.
Dr Faduyile made this appeal to the government on a national television interview, “Sunrise Daily” on Channels TV monitored by our medium.
Faduyile said Federal Government needs to realise in this new year that a healthy nation is a wealthy nation , hence the need to depart from the old approach of paying lip service to the needs and demands in the health sector.
He noted that if government is serious about the National Health Insurance Scheme, patients that really need quality health can easily subscribe to the scheme and benefit from health insurance, maintaining that this is the norm in developed countries where government has learnt to put a premium on people’s wellbeing. Hear him, ” the bedrock of the health sector of any serious country is the primary health care. Our primary health care facilities are almost non functional. If government sees genuine reason to equip our primary health care facilities, patients that need quality health can easily access them and benefit from the quality facilities, if government provide them.
” When we had the opportunity to meet with the presidency these were our demands to them that we need to urgently see to the need to revive our comatose primary health care system . The reason is that if primary healthcare system is good, people in the hinterland can get access to it and on time too and it solves a lot of medical challenges for them.”
He noted with regret that it had become worse to the extent that health care workers would use their money to support patients, noting that patients need money to get quality healthcare attention and drugs too. He said the job of the medical doctor becomes frustrating in the work environment where the necessary wherewithal needed to function optimally are non existent. ” Sometime , our hospitals are badly lit and stuffy with too many patients and few number of medical personnel. Government should make the doctors’ working environment conducive for us this new year,” he appealed .
Faduyile said they have made presentation to government to come to the aid of health professionals by declaring emergency in the health sector, stressing that if government is really keen on halting medical tourism which is fast becoming the norm among the elite class, more fund should be invested in the nation’s health sector so that modern medical equipment are procured for use for the benefit of all.
He noted that government can as well show seriousness about it’s commitment to improving the health sector by gifting the sector ‘ Health Bank’ like the other sectors like Agric and industry have their respective intervention banks too, adding that entrepreneural medicine where private hospitals can be assisted with loans that can make them have private hospitals of international standard can be possible with this intervention.
Dr Faduyile expressed surprise at the President’s new year speech where he noted that as important as the health sector is, it only got a one sentence mention in the President’s speech, stating that if all the entire health sector can get in a presidential speech is just one sentence, it reflects the mind set of government on this all important sector.
” If the government is not discussing issues of the health sector with much more commitment at the opening of a new decade then it is quite unfortunate,” Dr. Faduyile noted. He stressed that both the government personnel and the governed should realise that we are not in anyway immune from sickness, noting that there is no way government has shown any readiness for medical emergency in the time past and even up till now, urging health stakeholders to always drum it in the ears of government that it is not possible to incorporate health into the welfare of the country. He said the nation’s welfare package is good but it shouldn’t be in such a way that the health issue will be incorporated in the welfare plan, stressing that the health concern of the people of Nigeria is gigantic and cannot be lumped into any welfare plan .
On the issue of rivalry between medical doctors and other health professionals, the NMA President assured that such has become a thing of the past in the health sector. He said Doctors, Pharmacists, nurses all work together for the main goal of ensuring their patients get quality health services and attention and the mutual understanding among health workers is to ensure that this quality medical attention is given to patients without any hitch .
