Tinubu’s Reforms ‘ll Boost Healthcare Value Chain – Prof. Pate

Tinubu’s Reforms ‘ll Boost Healthcare Value Chain – Prof. Pate

Massive jobs will be created for thousands of teeming Nigerians by the time critical reforms championed by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration to reposition the country’s health sector begins to fruition.

This was disclosed by Professor Mohammed Ali Pate in an interview Economic Confidential, a sister news medium of PRNigeria; published by the Image Merchants Promotion (IMPR) Limited.

He said his team at the Ministry has unveiled and flagged off some key programmes and activities, aimed at tackling some teething challenges affecting the country’s health sector.

He said: “We articulated four key pillars to focus our attention on. The four pillars summarise the cornerstone of the effort we are putting forth to reposition the country’s healthcare system. The first is to deal with the governance of health in Nigeria, taking into account the fiscally-decentralised system of government that we have, where health is a concurrent item, that the federal and state governments have partial control over.

“The second pillar is Population Health Outcomes. That is life expectancy, mobility and mortality. Boosting population health outcome demands immunisation and revamping our immunisation programme, together with introducing new vaccines like the HPV.

“Some have to do with the primary healthcare system and we took the basic Healthcare Provision Fund as an anchor and the President approved for us a sector-wide program for health, to be complemented by the efforts of the states, and other external actors to drive improvements in the primary health care system; to make the 8,000 facilities that currently using the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, NPHCDA, platform more functional and to extend them to 17,000.

“The third pillar is to develop the Healthcare Value Chain that will ensure we produce the things that we need like consumables, generic pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. We cannot be entirely dependent on others all the time.

“In that regard, the President also approved for us an initiative to unlock the healthcare value chain and recently appointed a coordinator to work with us, and I will be chairing that initiative to drive that value chain so that we produce what we need.

“In doing so, we shall be creating economic value and jobs for our youth through the health sector. The health sector can be a job creator. In the United States almost one out of 9 or 10 jobs created in the last 10 years is in the health sector because the health sector is human resource-intensive.

“The fourth pillar is Health Security, to learn from the lessons of the pandemic, Ebola and other outbreaks. How do we ensure health security? Meaning that when outbreaks occur we know of them quickly, and we prevent them from happening if we can”.

During the chat with the editorial crew of Economic Confidential at his Abuja office, Pate eloquently and articulately highlighted the measures the President Tinubu-led administration is adopting to address teething challenges bedeviling Nigeria’s health sector, his vision for medical industrialisation and making the health sector add value to the economy in terms of job creation.

He said: “To create jobs, we need to grow our economy. If you look at the priorities of Mr. President, it is to grow this economy fast to a trillion and even double it. If you grow the economy at that rate, the economy will create job opportunities. Our hope is that the health sector will be a contributor to this larger effort to create jobs for our youth and it is possible to do that.

“Health is not just a consumption sector where it just provides services and then that is it. If we produce pharmaceuticals of high quality, we can export them to other African countries. At least 70 percent of our generic pharmaceuticals are imported. The jobs are in the countries that produce these things.

“So, the jobs are elsewhere and we receive the produced items as consumers. That discipline to produce for ourselves, we have not woken up to it and Mr. President said we have to renew the hope. We have to believe in ourselves and do the hard work to build this country.

“We must stop buying all the things others are producing. There are things that are sophisticated and we shall continue to buy from other countries, but those that are not so sophisticated we should at least produce them locally”.

According to the Minister, the federal government is assiduously taking steps to boost health business in the country.

“In the first-quarter of 2024, we will be co-hosting, together with the International Finance Corporation, IFC, a summit here and investment forum for health so, wait and see how that unfolds,” Prof. Pate said.

By PRNigeria