NIGERIA HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, WEAKNESSES AND SOLUTION

This pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of our healthcare system. Some of the weaknesses include

1) poor  or lack facilities, 2) old buildings,  

3) obsolete equipment

4) poorly equipped laboratories

5) inadequately trained personnel due to lack of fund for in-service and overseas training especially in the use of modern equipment 

6) lack of PPE and other health care consumables. 

Other weaknesses include 

7) poor regulation and management, 

8) poor funding  

9) low level of health insurance enrollment. 

Solutions include - 

1)the laws guiding hospitals establishment and management should be re-examined and strengthened so that all the weaknesses discovered now will be taken care off. 

2) State owned hospitals at General hospital level and above should  have isolation ward with all preparedness and compliment of staff eg doctors, nurses, pharmacists and health attendants who are trained to handle contaminated materials. 

3) private hospitals should be graded according to level of care to be rendered as follows

i)  basic out patient clinic,  

II) primary health care 

III) general hospital, each level must have facilities suitable for their level of care. Top of the range specialist hospitals must have facilities expected of the level of care it will provide. 

The private hospitals should be encouraged to merge and pull resources together to provide quality care expected of the class of hospital. Anyone not ready to merge and cannot meet up should be advised to close up. 

Many health care workers lost their lives to covid19, HIV, hepatitis B due to lack of right equipment or PPE etc, this should be looked into. 

There are some diseases private hospitals should not handle such as pulmonary tuberculosis and HIV, the reason being that most affected patients are poor and cannot afford the bill for prolonged period of time leading to default in treatment. This in turn causes drug resistant PTB, HIV which is dangerous to the society. Private health facilities should refer  such patients to govt hospitals where treatment is free. 

The government at different levels should provide adequate funds for training and retraining of health care workers. There is need to have more specialists in many areas including - infectious diseases, clinical virology, anaesthesiology, pulmonary medicine, renal medicine etc.  If these specialists are available and are given state of the art equipment our health care level will improve significantly. 

Family physicians should be given prime of place because they form the first contact of care for any patient entering the heath care system and they continue the patients' care. The family physician should head general hospitals, man the general out patient departments and in some cases he or she should be given training to handle emergency surgery especially those in the hinterland. 

Funds should be made available to renovate hospitals and to purchase new and modern equipment.

There's need to widen the scope of health care insurance so that the lowest of the lowest can enjoy good health care. It must be noted that these people in the lowest level are not covered at present and they form the bulk of the population. There's need to care for these set of people to prevent: 

I) hunger in the land because many of them are farmers in rural areas, 

II) criminality associated with joblessness among youths 

III) spread of preventable diseases because these set of people are highly mobile. They can easily spread communicable infections eg sexually transmitted infections, hepatitis, covid19 and pulmonary tuberculosis.

 It's saddening to note that many people both high and low are dying of covid19 and many infections which ordinarily should not cause death. This pandemic should be an eye opener to those who are in position of authority to develop the Nigerian health care system. 

 Nigerian health workers are among the best anywhere in the world, if given the right condition of service and equipment they will render first class services to the people of Nigeria and West Africa.