Healthcare
By Lydia Ngwakwe/Joan Odafe
Lagos, June 12, 2018 (NAN) Medical experts in Lagos on Tuesday urged government at all levels to ensure people at the grassroots have unhindered access to cheaper healthcare services in Nigeria.
They made the call at a symposium and the launch of “My Medical Bank Homecare’’- a telemedicine organisation in Lagos.
Its theme is: “Improving Healthcare Access for Every Nigerian.’’
“My Medical Bank Homecare” is the Nigeria’s first Healthcare Marketplace designed to enable health facilities, healthcare professionals and individual users to store essential health information from desperate locations.
It allows the generation of health intelligence, facilitate virtual clinical consultation and enable the exchange of health information securely through any web enabled device from anywhere in the world.
In his remarks, Dr Ola Brown, the Founder, Flying Doctors Nigeria, said that the only way to provide healthcare to the common man was to make it accessible, cheap and technology-driven.
Brown said: “The major challenges facing healthcare delivery are uncontrolled population growth and poor funding of healthcare.
“In order to address this, the cost of healthcare needs to be reduced, while striving to ensure increase in government allocations to the nation’s health facilities.
“One way of improving healthcare to the common man is to make it financially accessible, because healthcare is expensive anywhere in the world.
“Nigeria can do more and better with less if we can focus on preventive healthcare.’’
Also, Dr Tajudeen Sanusi, the Registrar, Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, urged the governments to deploy more medical personnel to the rural areas to assist the doctors in carrying out simple examinations.
According to Sanusi, this will enable the doctors to attend to more patients.
“I will advocate the deployment of health officers who will work under the doctor’s supervision using standard operating protocols as required by the Code of Medical Ethics in Nigeria.
“They will help the doctors to carry out simple physical examinations like checking for polar, dehydration, pulse and blood pressure.
“In some cases these medical practitioners are overburdened.
“It is important to point out that the doctors on the remote side of the interaction bears the ultimate responsibility for the patients,’’ he said.
Commenting, Mrs Olufunke Akanle, the Registrar, Medical Rehabilitation Therapy Board of Nigeria, called for the establishment of a community-based rehabilitation centre for People with Disabilities (PwDs).
“As we speak, the PwDs still go for checkups at far away tertiary centres instead of the primary healthcare centres; this should not be.
“This is why we are advocating the need for the PwDs to have a rehabilitation centre at the rural areas close to their communities where they can be integrated into the society.
“This should be incorporated into the primary healthcare centres for easy accessibility,’’ Akanle said. (NAN)
LED/JOJO/GOK
Edited by Olagoke Olatoye