METRO Stakeholders advocate for improved healthcare financing

institutions for decades.

Ajemba, who is currently Chief of Medicine, Defence Medical Centre, Abuja, added that as a result of the lean budgetary allocation to the health sector, the Nigerian health system is below the World Health Organisation Standard of 15% of the total budget.

He said: “The poor health financing results in weak and obsolete infrastructure in the hospitals, congestion of patients to access health care because of limited human resources, poor supply of water, wards congestion, irregular supply of electricity, weak telemedicine facility and recruitment, training and retraining or state of hospitals etc.

“The Government should show a commitment to improve the country’s healthcare system through increasing and prudent health spending.

“Government should adopt a health finance mechanism that can produce equitable access in Low-and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), that must be based on compulsory prepayment, fund pooling/risk-sharing and subsidisation, for those who cannot afford to pay”.

In her remarks, AEIG Founder, Mrs. Abiodun Essiet, decried that even after committing to the Abuja Declaration of 15% budgetary allocation to health, both past and present administrations are yet to implement it. The situation is worse in the states and local government.

According to her: “This reflects the value the government places on health and it is significant challenge faced in achieving efficient and effective health service delivery in Nigeria.

“This lecture provides an opportunity to reflect on government policies (both past and present) on healthcare financing and proffer solutions to the limitations in the cause of implementation”.

She continues: “For me as an activist, I have chosen to remember him (late Brig. Essiet), for what he stood for as a human and as an Army General, and one of the ways we want to continue is legacy is bringing decisions makers in the forefront of managing the nation’s healthcare sector and other public health facilities together to come up with policies and strategies that would improve funding to our health sector.

“When he fell ill, he was taken to four different hospitals including general hospitals, but he was turned back because those hospitals had no bed space, and barely had proper equipment and facilities like oxygen, to manage the situation.

“This is the experience of millions of people in Nigeria on a daily basis and the health condition of the patient usually get worse or even lose their lives in the process of commuting from one hospital to another.

“If our hospitals are well funded and equipped by the government, and he was given adequate care at the first hospital he was taken to, maybe he would have been here with us today instead of doing this in his memory”.