The Federal Ministry Of Health says, one of the major challenges it has been grappling with, is the lack of accurate data on disease outbreaks.
To reverse this trend, the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole said the ministry has made plans to deploy information communication technology to improve access to health care delivery.
Prof. Adewole and his counterpart in the Ministry of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, disclosed this at a meeting to inaugurate the National e-Health Committee in Abuja.
The Minister of Health explained that Nigeria is always lagging in obtaining specific health data, which are essential for determining the statistics of incidences and outbreaks.
This in turn would make it more difficult to determine and measure the best remedies for every case.
“If we have proper functional and robust data systems, it will show you the specific number of cases we have”, he said.
The Ministry of Communication, Adebayo Shittu, on his part described I.C.T as a key enabler, which everyone should leverage on, for better health care services.
He explained that the platform would improve data and documentation, stressing that the Ministry of Communications is doing all it can to ensure that in about 2-3 years of implementation, every area in Nigeria would have been covered.