Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, says the government is focusing on a radical restructuring of the healthcare system to ensure that all Nigerians have access to good healthcare.
Professor Adewole told Channels Television on Friday that regulations would also be strengthened.
“One of the things we want to do is to restructure the regulation,” he said, emphasising that there were reflections of corruption within the system.
“We are prepared to tackle it.
“We are looking at a situation where every Nigerian will be able to access healthcare within five kilometre radius but what that implies is that we need to do a radical restructuring of the health system.
“In the last four months, we decided to do a diagnosis and developed a proposal to address universal health coverage and we submitted it to the President who sent it for external review and the reviewers turned in positive report on this. He asked us to do a few things to adjust it and make sure that we develop a sustainable structure for this new health plan.
“Initially our plan was to target about 43 million Nigerians but the Vice President said it was not enough,” the Minister stated.
Pro-poor Health System
He quoted the Vice President as saying that “an administration that is committed to targeting poor people must look beyond 43 million people”.
“If you look at the World Bank indicators, about 80 to 100 million Nigerians are considered as poor so a health system that will be pro-poor should target about 100 million people.
“We went back to the drawing board and came out with this Primary Healthcare System per political ward. The political ward comprises of 10,000 people and when we target 10,000 Primary Health Centres, we are looking at 100 million people,” Professor Adewole explained.
He also stated that the government was looking at making health insurance compulsory to ensure that people buy into the scheme, assuring Nigerians that the number of ailments that the scheme would cover would increase as more persons buy into it.
Padded Health Ministry’s Budget
On the budget of the ministry that was said to have been padded, the Minister said he could not defend the budget at the National Assembly because the figures he saw did not reflect the thinking of the present administration.
“What I was presented with on the floor of the National Assembly was at variance with what we submitted. I think some errors were committed somewhere along the line and this had been admitted by quite a number of people.
“This administration is committed to addressing the imbalance and inequity within the health system and we are quite committed to putting things right.
“In preparing the budget, we were quite conscious of the promise that the party made to Nigerians. We wanted to reposition the health of Nigerians and place public health at the forefront of our health agenda,” he stressed.
Pointing out the alterations he may have noticed, he said that the budget presented to the National Assembly had no allocation made to public health and family health.
“The implication is that we will not be able to buy vaccine for our children or buy anti-retroviral drugs,” he stated.
The Minister further told Channels Television that it was difficult to determine those that were responsible for the alteration, but assured Nigerians that President Muhammadu Buhari had promised that “those who did it would be flushed out and dealt with. I am sure that is ongoing”.
Funding Vaccines
Giving his opinion on why provision should be made for vaccines in the budget, Professor Adewole said “vaccines are necessities with economic importance. For each dollar that you invest in vaccine your get about $16 in return”.
He said that since the United State was withdrawing from the funding of anti-retroviral drugs, the Nigerian government is committing some funds to the business, increasing funding and getting better commitment.
“That is why for the first time in three years we are recommending funding of anti-retroviral medication and procurement of test kits.
“We cannot put you on anti-retroviral therapy if you have not been confirmed to be HIV positive.
“We are part of an initiative called 90:90:90. Between now and 2020 we plan to test 90 per cent of Nigerians and to ensure that 90 per cent of those that tested positive are placed on anti-retroviral to help ensure that 90 per cent of those on anti-retroviral drugs witness viral suppression,” he explained, saying that the suppression technically means that the patient is ‘cured’.
“That does not imply that it is completely gone but it is a proxy of how effective the therapy has been,” the Minister stressed.
Medical Tourism
On medical tourism, the Minister said that about one million dollars was estimated to be involved on a yearly basis, a situation he said drains Nigeria’s resources.
He said that the government was looking at medical tourism as an isolated case and the repositioning of the entire system in a way the nation would get value.
The Health Minister also decried some practices by some persons in the sector, which he said were quite suspicious.
“As a minister, I sign some of these request for funding and yesterday (Thursday) I made a pronouncement that under our beat, we will not allow Nigeria’s resources to be used for cases that could be treated in Nigeria.”
He gave instances of requests that had been submitted to his ministry, with outrageous figures that were far beyond the cost of treating a particular ailment in Nigeria.
He told Channels Television that he had received a request for 10 million Naira for an ailment that could be treated in Nigeria for 150,000 Naira.
To address the issue, the Minister said that he was pushing for a policy that would ensure that before payment would be made for certain ailments, a referral letter from a hospital in Nigeria would be required, indicating that such ailment could not be treated in Nigeria.
He emphasised that the government would not allow such corrupt practices to continue.
Asked when Nigerians would begin to feel the impact of the government efforts to revitalise the health sector, he said that the government would revitalise 50 per cent of the Primary Health Centres in 2016