TO save Nigeria’s health sector from collapse, general practitioners have again appealed to the Federal Government to provide infrastructural development fund to strengthen the sector.

 

  The fund, similar to about N500 billion worth of intervention fund recently injected into the aviation and agriculture sectors, is to enhance capacity and support infrastructure in the private sector, responsible for over 60 per cent health service delivery in the country.

 

  The practitioners, under the aegis of Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria (AGPMPN), made the call at the weekend at their National Executive Council meeting held in Lagos, where they raised the alarm on crisis facing the health sector.

 

  National President of the body, Dr. Anthony Omolola, noted that the worsening health indices and condition of healthcare facilities would attest to a sector on the brink of collapse.

 

  He said while industrial disharmony and inter-professional rancour have also become recurring decimal in the system, the government has failed to foster partnership with the private sector, to utilise its abundant capacity in meeting the healthcare needs of the people. According to him, “it is obvious that the public sector cannot meet the demands of healthcare delivery by the people.” 

 

  AGPMPN had, in several studies, found wasting capacities in private sector that would have been useful to the entire health system. “But we also know that there will be very little in terms of 21st Century service delivery without genuine interest of the government to partner with the private sector,” he said.

 

  Omolola, who observed that the government has been proactive in meeting the needs of other important sectors like agriculture and aviation with the intervention fund, wondered why such gesture has not been extended to the health sector.

 

  He said: “Given this emergency on our hands, why should health come last in getting intervention fund? Without good health, no one can go to the farm or fly in an airplane. It goes to show that health sector is more important, if all industries must thrive.

 

   “It is, therefore, our appeal to government at all levels, especially the Federal Government, to ensure health intervention/infrastructure development fund for the health sector. This may not have to wait for bureaucracies of legislations because it is an emergency. With executive fiat, the fund could be provided to promote investment in the health sector.”

 

  In a related development, the Lagos State government has blamed alleged high taxation levied on private facilities in the state on existing federal law on taxation.  The Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, said at the forum that Lagos, like other states, has only collected most of the levies on behalf of the Federal Government.

 

Idris explained that health sector could only function as a system, being collaboration between the public and private.

 

  Idris said: “Though our state also has its basic charges, most of what is collected as tax is for the Federal Government. The association (AGPMPN) can make an appeal to the Federal Government to review or give tax exemptions, but it has to be based on justification,” he said.