Stakeholders drawn from the private and public health sector have been brainstorming on ways to effectively decentralise healthcare provision to achieve universal coverage and security on a national scale.
They are leveraging majorly on lessons learnt from the emergence of COVID-19 in Nigeria and how diverse stakeholders responded to the pandemic.
At the event tagged: Health Security Policy Dialogue, put together by the Nigeria Health Watch, a non governmental organisation with interest in promoting intelligence and providing insights on the Nigeria health sector, on Thursday, in Abuja, most of the participants buttressed the successes recorded in responding to the Ebola Virus Disease and the Covid-19 pandemic, both at national and sub-national levels.
Some of the participants, who formed the panel sessions, took time to dissect some of the key factors that militate against early response to health emergencies, like in the case Covid-19.
They drew allusions to the high rate of migration of health workers to other climes where they feel remuneration is better, abandoning Nigeria to its fate, faulty surveillance and data gathering mechanism amongst other challenges.
Also key at the dialogue session was political will on the part of the government to respond to health issues, funding constraints, port and border control measures, accountability structures and bureaucratic tendencies.
