Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians die each year from preventable causes due to a lack of access to primary health care services, according to Dr. Faisal Shuiab, Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA).
He made the announcement at a press conference announcing the formal beginning of a new program called Transform, which aims to dramatically improve and extend primary health care services across the country.
The event is part of a larger National PHC Summit that will take place later this month.
“Re-imagining PHC” is the name of the program, he added, and it would be conducted by a “historic combination of business sector leaders, international agencies, and government.”
He explained that the goal of this transformative effort is primary health care because it is the foundation of our entire health system.
“Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians die every year from treatable, preventable causes – due to a lack of adequate or accessible primary health care services,” he expressed concern.
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“We need to put an end to this right now, and we need to start making fundamental reforms.”
“We will officially announce this program at the Primary Health Care Summit on March 24 and 25 in Abuja.”
“Working with States and Local Government Areas, we will pool resources and commitments toward realistic, high-impact initiatives across all elements of PHC delivery,” he added while detailing how Re-imagining PHC hopes to change the country’s health system.
“Historically, public health spending has prioritized specific dangers like polio, malaria, and HIV/AIDS at the expense of a wide spectrum of chronic disorders and overall health.”
“Our narrow approach to issue solving has gotten us to where we are now: with some of the world’s worst and most terrible health statistics.” We must work in a holistic manner.
“We will invest in improving our ailing primary health care system so that it can treat infectious diseases as well as chronic sickness, prevention, diagnosis, and referral, mother and child care, and community wellness.”
“We will restore health centers; ensure the provision of general, laboratory, clinic, and personnel equipment; ensure the availability of quality drugs; procure ambulances for accessibility; and, last but certainly not least, we will train and employ quality nurses, midwives, clinical staff, and non-clinical staff at health centers across Nigeria.”
Shuaib stated that the difficulties caused by a lack of primary health care are enormous, and that they much outweigh the impact of COVID-19 on Nigeria’s population.
He stated that 128 out of every 1,000 infants under the age of five die in Nigeria, and Nigeria accounts for 20 percent of global maternal deaths, saying, “It’s heartbreaking, and we must address it as the emergency it is.”
Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, WHO Country Representative in Nigeria, spoke on behalf of development partners, emphasizing the importance of primary health care in achieving universal health coverage.
“Universal Health Coverage is a critical component of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 3: ‘Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages,’ which emphasizes the need for health to be accessible, equitable, safe, effective, quality, and affordable without putting people in financial hardship,” he says.
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Dr. Mulombo, on the other hand, insisted that progress toward UHC entails the creation and expansion of equitable, resilient, and sustainable health systems based on primary care, stressing that achieving this requires political will, deliberate and intentional resource mobilization, particularly domestic resources, and local ownership for sustainability.
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