By Hassan Zaggi
Concerned by the current situation of Nigerian’s health sector and the need to ensure that politicians put health on the front burner of their agenda, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) under the umbrella of Health Sector Reform Coalition (HSRC), yesterday, vowed to ensure that no politician wins election without including health in his/her agenda.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-day workshop, the Board Chairman, Health Reform Foundation of Nigeria (HeRFoN), Dr. Idris Muhammad, regretted that the health sector is choked by many challenges including inadequate funding, human resource and accountability.
According to him, considering that politicians are busy putting their plans and agenda together, there was the need for the over 100 CSOs working in different aspects of the health sector to come together and ensure that every politician includes health on top of his/her agenda.
“We think, as CSOs, we can pull our resources together and be able make the politicians listen to us and the best time is now that they are rolling out their agenda.
“This is the time to really catch them so that if they make the promise that they are going to do this or that, and they eventually win election, then we have something to hold on.
“We are also concern about accountability so that if they get elected they are going to address these issues. Then we can hold them accountable,” says Dr. Muhammad.
He further explained that: “We have observed, as we have done in the past, that political parties have never placed health on top of their political agenda.
“Many politicians do not understand the need for a robust health system. May be because most of the political actors believe that they have money enough if they are sick they can travel to other parts of the world for their health needs.
“We think, as a coalition, it is time we talk to the politicians, but one single voice cannot do it. That is why we urge the coalition to once again, wake up and pick up the challenge.”
Responding to questions from journalists, a member of the coalition, the Director General of West Africa Institute for Public Health, Dr. Francis Ohayido, lamented that the Nigeria’s health sector is currently sick and needs urgent help.
According to him, the human resource for health in the country has depleted because workers including doctors, nurses and many others have left for greener pastures in other parts of the country, hence, warned that if urgent action is not taken, the sector will be at a stand-still due to lack of experts.
“If you look at the human resource component of the health sector over the past four years, we have lost so many people and many are still leaving.
“It is not that people should not go and look for greener pasture, but we should offer them equitable opportunity in-house to have the conducive environment to work.
“If you are not treating them very well, they will leave. If they feel the infrastructure is not good enough for them to work, they will leave. And all this is coming down to the issue that we have not finance our health system very well.
“Our health system is still poorly accountable, it is one thing to ask for money for the health, but how about more health for the money. Transparency and accountability has been thrown into the bush.
“So, are we getting the right kind of health? It is going to get worst because if you don’t have the providers at the service delivery end, who is going to provide the service.
“It is just like we are now providing our own power source, water source, we may start becoming our own doctors and nurses for ourselves.
“These are the challenges. The health system is not doing too well, the health system is sick.”
He, therefore, insisted that CSOs working in the health sector must work together to salvage the sector from total collapse.
Earlier, in a goodwill message, the Director of Advocacy, Save The Children Nigeria, Amanuel Mano, warned that there is the urgent need for Nigeria to strengthen its health system so that it can tackle emerging and re-emerging diseases.
He lamented out-of-pocket health expenditure which, he said, “is unsustainable, inequitable, and pushes many people into poverty.
“Nigeria needs to strengthen its health system in order to effectively respond to emerging and re-emerging public health diseases, humanitarian crisis and provide financial protection, among many others.
“The challenges that confront the Nigerian health system over the decades create both the need and opportunity for health system reforms in order to improve health outcomes.
“To achieve success in the health sector in this modern era, a system well-grounded in routine surveillance and medical intelligence is necessary, coupled with strong leadership principles at different levels of care.
“At the heart of this is human capital: quality of training, capacity building of human resources for health.”
