Senate to increase budgetary funding for primary healthcare

The Senate on Thursday passed a motion to increase budgetary allocation for the management of Primary Health Care (PHC) in the country.

The resolution of the Senate was hinged on a motion sponsored by Sen. Oluremi Tinubu (APC/Lagos Central) and 108 other senators on the need to increase funding of primary health care for the benefits of Nigerians.

Sen. Tinubu, said the motion became necessary because of the challenges associated with health management in the country, adding that the health problems were traced to the low performance of primary health care facilities.

The senator added that available indicators from a World Bank survey showed that the performance of primary health care was being hampered by lack of financial resources, infrastructure deficit, and lack of drugs, equipment and vaccines.

She quoted the Frontiers in Public Health journal as having said that “only about 20 per cent of the 30, 000 primary health care centres in Nigeria are working with most of them lacking capacity to provide essential services.”

According to the senator, the failure of primary health care and the belief that it is for low income earners has resulted to influx of patients to secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities.

Senators Chimaroke Nnamani (Enugu East), Sen.Alero Adamu (Kebbi Central) and Dahiru Ashatu (Adamawa Central), who contributed to debate on the motion said that accessibility to healthcare was a fundamental right and must be accorded the required attention.
The senate, in addition to increasing the funding, urged the ministry of health to create awareness on the benefits of health and life insurance and further directed the ministry of environment to put in place policies to ensure that every employer of labour has health insurance package for their employees.

It also urged federal and state ministries of health to encourage medical technological innovations in primary health facilities in their respective domains.