SAN FRANCISCO, May 21, (THEWILL) – The Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, has been drilled by the Senate over the sorry state of healthcare facilities and services across the nation especially Teaching Hospitals.
The appearance of the Health Minister before the Senate on Tuesday follows a resolution of the Senate last week to invite the minister over a motion querying the state of the nation’s teaching hospitals.
Senate President Bukola Saraki while introducing the Health Minister to the House said the lawmakers are concerned about the deteriorating conditions of facilities at teaching hospitals across the nation.
“We would give you the opportunity to take the floor to brief the Senate on the state of affairs of the Nigerian Teaching Hospitals. We are concerned with the deteriorating conditions of our hospital facilities across the country.
“Despite the annual budgetary allocation to the health sector, Nigerians are still dying because of obsolete equipment, the poor state of infrastructure, lack of generating sets, lack of power, sometimes lack of diesel, lack of drugs, etc which we are very concerned about.
“We will like to hear from you on what the true situation is, what solutions and measures you have to address the problem that is affecting the entire country and after that, we will take questions from my colleagues,” Saraki said.
Speaking before the Senate, Adewole said, “Over the last couple of years, we have had a challenge.
“We can describe the health care as a pyramid, with Primary Health Care at the base, Secondary at middle and Tertiary at the top.
“Only 10% of Nigerians who require care would need to go to tertiary institutions.
“For them to function effectively, they depend on functional primary and secondary health care centres. If these two levels of care are functional, about 90% of ailments will be taken care of.
“For us in Nigeria, they represent the topmost and by design are expected to manage complex and complicated cases.
“We have 22 teaching hospitals in the country and 17 specialist hospitals under the direct body of the Federal Government.
“The teaching hospitals constitute the apex of health care in any country.
“We can compare it to a building — primary health as the foundation, the secondary as the wall and the tertiary as the roof.
“The problem we have is that the foundation is bad and the wall is weak and we are only concerned about the roof.
“If we invest in the Primary Health Care, a lot of people would not have a cause to go to the Tertiary.
“Teaching hospitals cannot survive alone and in isolation. The State needs to partner with us so that secondary hospitals would be working.
“We believe that the issue of power supply should be looked into.”
About the Author
