World Health Day 2022: Nigeria’s Health Sector Marches on with Faisal Shuaib

1. World Health Day 2022: Nigeria’s Health Sector Marches on with Faisal Shuaib

By Usman B. Balarabe

With efficient health care delivery that ensures citizens’ rapid access to critical and emergency primary health services, Nigeria’s fragile healthcare system is swiftly mutating to a robust one while struggling like every other country across the globe to recover from the effect of COVID-19 pandemic.

I am just coming out of a robust three-day retreat organised by Image Merchants Promotions Ltd (IMPR), publishers of PRNigeria and Economic Confidential in conjunction with the Wole Soyinka Institute for Investigative Journalism and Mcarthur Foundation.

During the course of the training, one of the most celebrated investigative journalists in Nigeria, Yusuf Ali, took us on ‘Investigative Reporting in the Digital Age’ and he complained about the total lack of attention and searchlight by journalists on the health sector. He said there is a lot going on in that sector that is deserving of robust coverage but they are being ignored.

While there is some rot that needs to be addressed, there are also a lot of individuals, both in government and private sector, who are breaking barriers and defying odds to fix the rot and bring the nation’s health sector at par with that of other countries. One of such individuals is a certain first-rate professional called Dr Faisal Shuaib.

Undoubtedly, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), under his watch, has established terrains through medical intelligence to revive the Health Care system especially having suffered from a global pandemic, to ensure that at least over 70 percent of Nigerians including those with underlying health challenges are now fully vaccinated.

As the World Health Day is celebrated annually in accordance with the World Health Organization’s aim to discuss health-related issues, is also notable for Dr Faisal Shuaibu’s unwavering effort to ensure that the economy is focused more on health and wellbeing of its citizens as well as ensuring that cities are liveable and people have control over their health and that of the planet amidst the global Covid-19 pandemic and a polluted planet where diseases like cancer, asthma, heart diseases amongst others are rapidly increasing.

The NPHCDA, under Shuaib, has done a lot of work healthcare revitalization, immunisation for a polio – free in Nigeria, as well as containing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The agency has set a historic record towards stimulating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3 by ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being of people of all ages.

Despite a recent report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) which revealed that for every 10,000 persons in Nigeria, there are four doctors available to treat or attend to them, that is a ratio of 4:10,000 as against the global agency’s standard doctor-patient ratio which is 1:600.

However, Shuaib’s plans to transform the under-resourced and weak primary healthcare system in Nigeria by leveraging private sector, international agencies and government collaborations to present ambitious and attainable plans to remodel the country’s PHC system by 2030 is a solutions-focused driven development that would not only reverse the besetting national health challenges but also an action to transform health in Nigeria for the future generations.

Now with the private sector’s partnership with the government and other development partners to ensure that the funding gap of about N1.4 trillion needed to deliver standardised PHC centres is realised, Nigerians will enjoy qualitative, accessible and affordable health care services, especially that the organised private sector had already kicked off its initiative to adopt one primary health care centre in each of the 774 local government areas across the country.

By 2030, especially at the primary health care (PHC) level, Nigeria will be able to compete globally with other countries on standardised Primary Health Care Centers.

Similarly, with the recent record of 100% daily covid-19 vaccinations increase, which according to a January report, the daily vaccine uptake was doubled to 200,000 doses in December 2021 and January 2022 is an indication of the NPHCDA’s efforts in curbing public health infodemic resulting from Fake News and misinformation narratives about the covid-19 virus.

Recall that amidst the pandemic, researchers have conducted various studies on the impact and perspectives of Fake News and misinformation narratives about covid-19 in Nigeria. And most of the findings revealed how social media platforms contributed immensely in the widespread of these misinformation narratives about covid-19 from the perspective of its causes; how Nigerians were impacted as well as how the campaign succeeded in creating vaccine resistance in Nigeria.

One of the achievements of Shuaibu is the pronouncement and certification of Nigeria as polio-free by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2020.

Usman Bello Balarabe a Staff writer with the Economic Confidential writes from Kano