{"id":3384,"date":"2022-12-17T12:39:08","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T12:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/?p=3384"},"modified":"2022-12-17T12:39:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-17T12:39:08","slug":"nigeria-70-of-nigerias-population-rely-on-primary-healthcare-facilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/nigeria-70-of-nigerias-population-rely-on-primary-healthcare-facilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria: \u201870% of Nigeria\u2019s Population Rely on Primary Healthcare Facilities\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib, has said that 70 per cent of Nigerians presently live in the rural areas where the hospital facility closest to them are primary healthcare centres.<\/p>\n

He also said with regard to COVID-19 vaccination strides, the agency had been able to fully vaccinate 53 per cent of the eligible population in the country.<\/p>\n

Speaking during a media parley in Abuja to review performance of its COVID-19 intervention efforts, Shuaib said that a large proportion of Nigeria\u2019s population are in rural areas, adding that over 70 percent are in rural areas where the closest hospital facility are the primary health centres<\/p>\n

He also said that there are challenges in the primary health care space, which needed to be addressed if Nigeria is to achieve the set target on universal health coverage.<\/p>\n

Shuaib said: \u201cThe things we\u2019re going to say to our leaders in 2022 or 2023 is that we need more human resources. We need the right infrastructure. We need the right equipment, commodities, utilities and our primary health care centers, that it is better to lay a very solid foundation for your health system and that foundation is primary health care, instead of spending huge amounts of resources building large primary large tertiary care facilities, fantastic specialties hospitals, where people don\u2019t even go to.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarge proportion of our population is in rural areas over 70 per cent are un rural areas. And what is the access that they have to health care it has to be in the primary health care centers if you\u2019re able to manage these conditions are the primary health care centers you see that there is\u00a0\u00a0deconjunction of the tertiary health services so that doctors, especially in the tertiary health centers, will be focusing on more complex disease conditions, not a situation where you find people lining up in the outpatient department of tertiary hospitals trying to treat just diarrhea or malaria\u201d.<\/p>\n

Shuaib stated that government has ambitions to turn around the situation of our primary health care centres for good but that things are not in any way close to where it should be.<\/p>\n

However, the director said that country has witnessed substantial progress in the last few decades even with underfunding of the primary health care.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at what\u2019s happening in the space, you\u2019ve seen how despite our meager resources, the state of primary health care in a number of states we\u2019ve been able to provide the leadership to galvanize the sub national level towards achieving polio eradication.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we have our challenges in the primary health care space, but it is very clear that we\u2019re on the right path. We\u2019re finally on the right path towards achieving our goals. The things that we keep saying that we keep saying are the things we\u2019re going to say to our leaders in 2022 or 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat we need more human resources. We need the right infrastructure. We need the right equipment, commodities, utilities and our primary health care centers, that it is better to lay a very solid foundation for your health system and that foundation is primary health care, instead of spending huge amounts of resources building large primary large tertiary care facilities, fantastic specialties hospitals, where people don\u2019t even go to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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According to Shuaib, the idea of developing and equipping the primary health care centres is that where the country is able to manage certain health conditions in the primary health care centers, it led to the\u00a0\u00a0deconjunction of the tertiary health services so that doctors, especially in the tertiary health centers, will be focusing on more complex disease conditions.<\/p>\n

He said that a situation where you find people lining up in the outpatient department of tertiary hospitals trying to treat just diarrhea or malaria is no longer acceptable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people are in a tertiary hospital and they have malaria, it has to be due to complicated malaria not you know, you know, uncomplicated malaria. So, this government has made a lot of progress in terms of primary health care compared to previous government,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Speaking about the December 2022 COVID-19 vaccination target by the agency, Shuaib said they have exceeded expectations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had told Nigerians that by December 2022, we\u2019ll be able to cover 70% of the eligible. So, at this point, we\u2019re at the point where we\u2019ve been able to fully vaccinate 53% of the eligible population, but for those that have gotten their first dose, we have been able to reach up to 63%.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if you look at the mart, we\u2019re doing very, very well and actually we did not expect that we\u2019ll be able to achieve this again, when you put the kinds of infrastructure, the number of human resources that we have side by side with you know, the number of people that who have vaccinated I think we have to bring it down to the leadership provided by Mr. President, the Vice President, the governors, our traditional leaders, who have, you know, provided the right information about COVID-19,\u201d he said .<\/p>\n

Going forward, Shuaib said the agency is going rely on the partnership with state governors and the media to provide the right information to educate our community members about the usefulness of routine immunization.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib, has said that 70 per cent of Nigerians presently live in the rural areas where the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[90,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nigeria","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/The-Executive-Director-of-the-National-Primary-Healthcare-Development-Agency-NPHCDA.jpg?fit=1242%2C834&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3390,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions\/3390"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regtechafrica.com\/healthcare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}