The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has blamed Nigeria’s poor health care delivery on the three tier system of government being practised in the country.
The president of the NMA, Dr Osahon Enabulele, who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja in a press briefing to flag off its Physician Week, said that most local and state governments in Nigeria are yet to give priority to the recruitment, retention and development of the appropriate health human resource.
He explained that the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2010 had estimated that for African countries to meet the MDGs, a million health workers would have to be trained.
He, however, added that the states and local government, “cite their impecunious states and the principle of federalism”, saying, “this has led to job dissatisfaction and migration of medical doctors and other health workers to developed countries.”
According to him, states and local governments sadly usually base their decisions on the fact that Nigeria operates a federal system of government.
Enabulele also lamented what he called the despicable state of the primary and secondary health care systems under the control of the local and state governments which he said had created several problems and complications, including pushing large number of persons to the tertiary institutions for care.
He said, ” This is thus suffocating and overstretching the available facilities and health human resources at the specialist/ tertiary healthcare level”.
This trend, the NMA president noted, has contributed to Nigerians losing confidence in the health sector and looking for other alternatives to cater for their health needs resulting, in “increasing reliance by Nigerians on unorthodox means to attend to their health care needs including the patronage of quacks.
To help tackle these experiences, Enabulele said that Professor Eyitabo Lambo would during their physician week deliver the guest lecture on the theme, “Federalism and Nigeria’s Healthcare System- an appraisal of the primary and secondary health care systems”.
