Private health sector hopeful Economic Recovery Plan will boost healthcare

By Chioma Obinna

NIGERIANS  deserve high quality healthcare and the private sector can play a pivotal role in ensuring that such quality is delivered and made accessible.

Members of the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria, who gave this position in Lagos, said  although the proposed Government’s Mega Hospitals in the six geopolitical zones is  laudable, government has no business building more hospitals.

In a chat during a one day stakeholders consultations on the role of the private sector in the Health Agenda of Nigeria’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan, (ERGP) 2017 to 2020, President of HFN, Mrs. Clare Omatseye said the private sector has the potentials to unlock the potentials of the country’s healthcare.

Omatseye who described the Federal Government’s ERGP policy draft as laudable, with an all inclusive, affordable and accessible healthcare objective, expressed concerns on some areas.

Noting that Primary healthcare remained a big challenge, she maintained that if Nigeria can get Primary Healthcare right, the country would have saved the secondary and tertiary hospitals from treating diseases such as malaria but focus on more bigger things.

She observed that if government can provide the enabling environment, private sector can drive some of the primary things at the primary care level.

Omatseye who took a swipe on the proposed 10,000 PHCs posited that government has no business building new health centres but can get private sector involved to revitalised, reequipped and more importantly run the existing ones.

“One of the strategies is partnership with private sectors and to move away not just in building hospitals but making impact in the lives of Nigerians. Private sector comes with a lot of efficiencies and know-how and government recognises our roles through Private Public Partnerships.”

She said services can be improved by leveraging on technologies to do task shifting. “We don’t have enough doctors in the country; we can get midwives, clinical health extension workers to help man some of the centres. We can be more preventive in our approach as against waiting for people to walk through the hospitals. These are the things we think can be done in a short term. We think this is a perfect mix where you have the existing building partnering with the private sector to take over the centres as well as providing human resources and alternative resources to man the centres.”

On the proposed mega hospitals, Omatseye said the idea of a mega hospital was a brilliant strategy but needs to be articulated. “Government shouldn’t be building hospitals. Partnership with private sector can make a difference. We want to make a difference. Nigerians need and deserve high quality healthcare and that access is what we are here to do.”

Continuing, she explained that the EGRP was designed to drive a structural economic transformation with emphasis on improving public and private sector efficiency in key sectors including health.

On the one -day stakeholders’ consultation workshop, she explained that the forum was a gathering of key players in the private health sector to dissect policy objectives and strategy of the EGRP document.

Corroborating his views, a member of HFN, Mr. Remi Adeseun, who also lauded the plan said with a well crafted specific implementation idea and innovations, the document, would reposition the country’s healthcare for the best.  He  explained that the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria’s Workshop on the ERGP 2017-2020 was to discuss and engage the Nigerian healthcare private sector in the implementation of the health Agenda of the ERGP as well as illicit the position of the private sector on the ERGP, debate and fully understand the impact of the plan on the private healthcare sector, determine the possibility of influencing the direction of implementation of the plan,

The workshop will conclude with the drafting of a position statement on the ERGP which will ultimately act as a driver for the implementation of the Plan, as far as the Health Sector is concerned.

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