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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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Nigeria ranks 187th on WHO's index, minister decries decay
THE on-going reforms in the health sector notwithstanding, the Minister of Health, Prof. Eyitayo Lambo, has said that the Federal Government was far from achieving the desired results.
He buttressed his position with a recent survey which indicated that one mother dies in every 100 deliveries, saying that Nigeria's maternal mortality rate is still one of the highest in the world. He added that the country's health system performance was ranked 187th among the 191 member states by the World Health Organisation.
Lambo described the result as very dangerous for the country and regretted that past administrations never took the issue of health very serious, which led to present decay and collapse in the sector.
The Minister was addressing stakeholders during last week's ministerial briefing in Abuja.
"For far too long, our national health system, which is made up of ministries of health at federal and state levels and the local governments health authorities, public health institutions, agencies and parastatals of government and private sector, both for profit and not-for-profit, had performed far below expectations of all Nigerians.
"Some indicators of the reasons for our deplorable current health situation include, but are not limited to, our high under-five mortality rate, poor health performance, high maternal death rate, and even our adult mortality rate are higher than the average for sub-saharan Africa," he said.
Lambo attributed the poor performance to limited capacity for policy, planning, programme formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation at all levels.
He said that there was no health law describing the national system and defining the health functions of each of the three tiers of government. The partnership between the public and private sectors, he continued were non-existent or ineffective as a result disease programmes like Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS), tuberculosis and malaria and other programmes like reproductive health were implemented within a weak health system and have had little impact.
The minister regretted that routine immunisation coverage rate that reached a high level in the early 1990s nose-dived to an all-time low while very high proportion of primary healthcare facilities serve only about five -10 per cent of their potential patient load, due largely to consumers' loss of confidence in them.
On the state of the secondary and tertiary health institutions, Lambo said that the former was in a prostate condition while diagnostic and investigative equipment in tertiary health institutions were outdated. He also said that the referral systems between various types of facilities were shadows of their original life.
Lamenting the poor funding in the health sector, Lambo said: "Public expenditure on health is less than $8 per capita, compared to the $34 recommended internationally. Private expenditures are estimated to be over 70 per cent of total health expenditure with most of it coming from out-of-pocket expenditures in spite of the endemic nature of poverty."
He, therefore, concluded that the nation lacks a broad-based health financing strategy and is not managing effectively and efficiently the limited resources available on it.
"There is a culture of corruption and self-interest, poor co-ordination of donors and development partners and lack of awareness on the part of the consumers to their right to quality care system. All these are major contributors to the failure of the health sector and for any meaningful change to be introduced we have to begin from these points and thank God that is exactly where our health sector reform agenda has placed more emphasis. This means that there is still hope for us to improve. I am convinced that there is light at the end of this tunnel we are crawling through," Lambo said.
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