By Yusuf Usman Danmadami
Nigeria lacks enough health staff, according to the Minister About 400,000 healthcare professionals are not enough in Nigeria, according to Prof. Ali Pate, Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, to meet the country’s population’s healthcare demands.
After his three-day briefing with ministry departments and agencies, Prof. Pate made the announcement to reporters on Saturday in Abuja.
The government called the meeting to develop a plan for Nigeria’s healthcare system.
According to Pate, the 400,000 workforce in Nigeria’s healthcare system consists of community health workers, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, doctors, lab scientists, technicians, and auxiliaries.
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The government called the meeting to develop a plan for Nigeria’s healthcare system.
“So if we think about it, we can produce for our own needs, and if some leave, then they go and earn resources and they come back with some experience,” he stated.
However, Pate asserted that some of them might return to serve the nation if infrastructure were repaired and people were treated with dignity.
“Therefore, I don’t want to minimize the contribution of the employees we have.
“While we train more or retrain the ones we have and while we try to address their challenges, we must honor them, congratulate them, and make their lives simpler.
In the future, we will continue to support and develop the Nigerian health workforce because we sincerely value it, he said.
When discussing how to stop medical tourism, Pate noted that it was a problem in practically all nations, developed or not, since individuals traveled to East Asia for surgery because it was less expensive there.
“However, what appears to be a problem is using public funding to support it and passing up the chance to maintain part of the resources utilized to engage in medical tourism domestically.
“We have started talking about the models or processes where we’ll take that route as part of extending the value chain so that it’s not always paid by the public.
Therefore, he said, “If you want to have plastic surgery, you don’t need to utilize government money to pay for your plastic surgery; instead, if we have a facility here that will do it for you, we will keep your dollars here and employ a few attendants here to execute the treatment for you.
“When I spoke about releasing the healthcare value chain, I also meant to mobilize private capital to invest in the human and physical resources so that we can provide some of the services that people currently travel to India for.
“We have started talking about the models or processes where we’ll take that route as part of extending the value chain so that it’s not always paid by the public.
Therefore, he said, “If you want to have plastic surgery, you don’t need to utilize government money to pay for your plastic surgery; instead, if we have a facility here that will do it for you, we will keep your dollars here and employ a few attendants here to execute the treatment for you.
Let’s reach a stage where we have a program, the government’s budget is laid out, you are making a contribution, and there is transparency on both sides.
In addition to being more transparent about what is coming from its own side, the government also has to know more about how third parties use their resources, he said.
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