A thread appeared on NL recently in which the minister of health was said to have plans to re-energise the Primary Health Care Programme.
He said that the health centres would be managed by nurses and community people.

I opted to create a thread on this issue instead of merely making a brief comment on the thread on what the minster intends to do.
I make bold to say that the rural areas are where the greatest need for health care services occurs
Due to poverty and illiteracy, the people get sick more than the urban folks.

In order for these needs to be met fully, doctors, pharmacists, lab. technicians, nurses, etc , need to be posted to those places.
Nurses alone cannot handle most of the emergency and other cases that do occur.
Cases such as bleeding after or during labour, minor/moderate injuries, objects in children's nose or ear, even medical cases that require
thorough examination and a good knowledge of drugs are beyond nurses.

The various health centres are under the local government areas.
Probably because of lack of the finance or they are not mandated to do so, LGAs hardly employ doctors.

For obvious reasons, nobody wants to work in the rural areas.
Doctors, nurses, etc, need to be posted to rural health centres on rotational basis.
In the North, for example, most doctors who work there are in the rural health centres.

There is no need to duplicate health centres, as has been the case, all over the place without staff to man them.
The colonial masters left a solid and big health centre in my community and it has no doctor.
Various governments came and built some more.....no doctors!

Most people have had experiences in which lives would not have been lost had a doctor been around.
In most cases, the distance to the nearest health facility with a doctor is far.
And if an emergency occurs in the night, which is usually the case, transportation will become a problem.

I blame the absence of a doctor in our health centre for the loss of a dear one years back, when I was in secondary school.
It was a simple case of a middle age woman collapsing while doing chores.
The dispensers, that's the people available then, gave drip and B-complex vitamin only.
They had no clue what the problem was and nobody had the intelligence to check the blood pressure. It did not end well.


No need to bore you with the obvious, but any plan to make health care services more accessible to the rural people that does not include
posting doctors to the health centres is flawed. Incentives/inducements should exist for people working in remote areas.

Be it rural or urban area the sworned duty of a doctor is to save lives. (Hippocratic oat) afterall some doctors voluntarily go to war front to save people's lives likewise refugee camps. So nigerian doctors should nt be an exception

afoobabs:
Be it rural or urban area the sworned duty of a doctor is to save lives. (Hippocratic oat) afterall some doctors voluntarily go to war front to save people's lives likewise refugee camps. So nigerian doctors should nt be an exception

That is the expectation but not the reality.
Truth is heathwise, government has generally neglected the rural areas by not adequately staffing the health centres.

I'm sure these issues were put in perspective when the minister of health said he wanted to revitalize the health sector.

First, you can't have enough doctors to go round with the present conditions of service.

Which doctors again, the ones that are routinely called bastards, murderers, quacks and all kinds of names especially on social media in Nigeria. While people like me are advising my younger collegues to get out of the country and find places where their services will be appreciated: some are advocating more suffering for them. My advice get all the caring, good, expirienced doctors from other countries who are no interested in money and are not half baked to come and man the rural, hospitals. At least unlike we Nigerian doctors foreign doctors don't like money or comfort and will maybe work for free.

twoondei:
I'm sure these issues were put in perspective when the minister of health said he wanted to revitalize the health sector.

First, you can't have enough doctors to go round with the present conditions of service.

Conditions of service need to be more attractive for rural doctors. It is not difficult to do.

I think there are enough doctors to go round.
For a start, one doctor can be in charge of a central health post with the peripheral ones feeding cases into it.
Ever seen or been to a recruitment interview centre for for doctors? It is always a crowd hoping to work in the FMC or General Hospital.

We will see how the minister's plans work.
But if you ask me, I will say it's the usual executive speak.

Lol..Who will pay them? How much is allocated to the health ministry again sef?

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DrAdonis:
Lol..Who will pay them? How much is allocated to the health ministry again sef?

In the end, it all comes down to a few things:
Eliminate corruption and vote more money for health.
Otherwise, any ambitious promise will still be what we have been hearing.....

allycat:
Which doctors again, the ones that are routinely called bastards, murderers, quacks and all kinds of names especially on social media in Nigeria. While people like me are advising my younger collegues to get out of the country and find places where their services will be appreciated: some are advocating more suffering for them. My advice get all the caring, good, expirienced doctors from other countries who are no interested in money and are not half baked to come and man the rural, hospitals. At least unlike we Nigerian doctors foreign doctors don't like money or comfort and will maybe work for free.

perfectly expressed. The hypocritical attitude of the Nigerian public toward health professionals in Nigeria is nauseating.

When the inept govts are serious, it isnt just the Primary Health that will improve, but virtually everything else.

Did u follow the budget at all? How much was budgeted for the Teaching Hospitals, the NPHCDA? How much for the state house clinic? Believe your politicians at your own peril.

More doctors from Nigeria practise abroad than at home. The ones at home are all gearing to move. Nobody has a right to stop them from pursuing their goals. It isnt only the economic realities of the 80s that are repeating in history, the historical exodus of skilled proffesionals that occurred that period is already unfolding. The effects can only be appreciated in the future.

Doctors are willing to work in the rural areas. Many rural private hospitals have a hustling, hardworking doctor there. Same cannot be said of govt health centres. The reasons are never far-fetched. The solutions aint rocket science, as with other socio-infrastructural issues in Nigeria.