Lagos — Part of the irony of our national development is that rather than situations improving, some key sectors tend to deteriorate. One such instance is in the health sector where the once robust primary health care system is almost completely extinct now.

In 1988, the late Professor Olikoye Ransome Kuti, the then Minister of health not only introduced a robust Primary Health Care system, he vigorously pursued it and promoted it with passion so much that it became a state policy in the health sector. Even illiterate mothers were so mobilized that they too could offer some basic health care treatments like ORT (Oral Rehydration Therapy).

Public enlightenment was an integral part of the health programmes at the time. As a result, dispensaries and local medicare centres were readily available in most communities. Healthcare was in the neighbourhood. The consequence was that most communicable and even non-communicable diseases, especially among children and minors, were reduced significantly.

With the near non-existence of an effective primary health care system, and the ill-equipped and no-drug hospitals, worsened by the exorbitant medical bills of private hospitals, many people have long resorted to self medication, or even seeking succour from the growing industry of spiritualists or traditionalists. The result is that we are today, recording more cases of fatalities rather than improving on what they used to be. Medicare is today farther from the people than it was two decades ago.

We admit that the situation improved a little during the PTF era (mid 90s), where healthcare received fair attention from the federal government. Then, drugs were supplied to hospitals, medical personnel were sufficiently motivated etc. But all that have died.

Yet health is on the concurrent list, meaning that it is a responsibility of every tier of government. What we see is bogus and empty health campaign platitudes which rarely permeate to the grassroot. Except for a few states, the genuine attention to health matters is at best lip-deep and at worse, deceptive. Even then, there is annual budget for health care system, most of which either get diverted to other matters, or are outrightly embezzled by corrupt government officials. And the consequence is that health issues suffer and the people are shortchanged.

And because the entire health sector is ill-managed and ill-equipped to face contemporary challenges of healthcare, most top government officials and the very rich have understandably lost faith in the nation's medicare, such that for even minor health needs, they fly abroad to seek treatment. The worry is what then happens to the masses who neither have such capacities for foreign treatment nor even the financial wherewithal to pay for private medical treatment here in Nigeria.

For a nation that keyed into the global campaign of Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) most of which are predicated on healthcare - primary healthcare system -, the evident shortcomings in this regard betray how distant we are from global benchmarks, with just about five years away.

We urge the Ministry of Health and other public health agencies to brace up with the challenge of reviving the comatose Primary health care institutions in such a way that they will, once again, restore the hope of the people not only on the healthcare delivery system but on the government as a whole.

Conscious efforts at all levels of governance is required not only to arrest the deterioration, but also to revive the healthcare sector. After all, the economic health of a nation is dependent on the physical well being of its people.