Leadership (Abuja)
Winifred Ogbebo
24 February 2009
Abuja — The Federal Government is set to upgrade four hospitals in three regions in the country, including FCT, Abuja, with the inauguration of an eight-man advisory committee.
The hospitals to be upgraded are; University Teaching Hospital, Enugu, Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, Zaria, University Teaching Hospital, Ibadan , and the National Hospital , Abuja .
The Minister of Health, Professor Babatunde Oshotimehin, who inaugurated the committee yesterday in Abuja, condemned what he called, the attitude of some health workers while providing service to people.
He said it is an indictment to the nation for prominent Nigerians to always go outside the country to receive treatment while they can actually get the service in the country.
According to the minister, the required skills are available in these hospitals, but the structure on ground is what should be worried about.
He said, "The state of health sector in this country is very porous. Structurally, we believe that the greatest investment should be to start from where people live and that was the reason for our campaign on the need to improve primary health.
It is very important, so that we can position tertiary hospitals where it should be.
"We have to address the structural issues and use the resources and skills available to provide quality service to people. That means raising the standard of quality care and practice to the next level. When the structures are put in place, care, service and practice will improve.
"Going out to Cairo from Maiduguri where we have a teaching hospital to receive treatment by our prominent brothers and sisters is an indictment to the nation.
That is to say that they don't have confidence in the service we provide here".
He pointed out that the problem is not about providing service but good attitude to those who need it by health workers, adding that the essence of setting up the committee is to look into the attitude of healthcare providers, and to practise medicine right.
"The level at which our medicine is practised is not encouraging. Attitude is the major issue; it is not the availability of people but the way these people are being handled.
It is about deployment of resources effectively to be able to deliver the best service to the people.
In many ways, we were not able to organise ourselves on the best way to deliver service and the structure to carry it out", he stressed.
He, however, challenged the committee to come out with the best options to upgrade the hospitals and ensure accountability of resources and what it would take in terms of staffing, facilities and to improve infrastructural systems of the four hospitals.
In his remarks, the Minister of State for Health, Dr. Idi Hong, said the rate at which people travel out of the country to receive treatment necessitated the inauguration of the advisory committee, saying that the responsibility of the Federal Government is tertiary hospitals, but will not neglect primary health.
The Chairman of the committee, Professor Tayo Sokambi, while responding, promised that the committee would deliver within the time frame which is 6 weeks.
The terms of reference for the committee include; advising government on short, medium and long term measures towards upgrading four federal tertiary health institutions for the provision of apex (state of art) medical referral services in Nigeria; to advise government on the detailed human resource, infrastructural, equipment and financial resources required to achieve this mission; and to advise government on management and financing options for these hospitals (including PPP), as well as any other important issues relevant to the success of this project.
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