•Hopes hang on the Osinbajo reform committee to set things right before 2023

Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated a health sector reform committee headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. The committee was given six months to come up with a comprehensive report on how to improve on health infrastructure in the country. As expected, professionals were skeptical of a good outcome as a result of our experiences. In 2001, African Heads of State held a summit in Abuja where it was decided that all countries should boost budgetary allocation to health to 15 per cent. The highest Nigeria has gone since then is seven per cent.

There was also a Yayale Ahmed Professionals Health Committee Report that has been gathering dust on the shelf since it was submitted to the Federal Government. And, in 2014, the National Assembly passed a National Health Act meant to greatly improve the health system and align it with global best practices. It failed as public servants ignored it. That law had no effect from the day it was signed by President Goodluck Jonathan.

We agree with the professionals that any excitement arising from setting up the Osinbajo committee is premature. The track record of the present administration does not encourage such optimism. The Coronavirus pandemic ravaging the globe is a testimony to the importance of the health sector. Even countries with advanced health systems were so afflicted that the hospitals could not cope. The United States of America that had sacrificed the Obama health care reform plan at the altar of partisan politics regretted that it did and paid dearly with the loss of about 656,000 lives. Brazil has also lost nearly half a million lives. Africa has been spared such grave experience by factors not fully explained yet.

Nigeria cannot continue to count on providence to save it from the impact of future pandemics. At the moment, the indices indicate that Nigeria remains very backward. When Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (as he then was) seized power from the Shagari administration in December 1983, he attempted to justify the intervention on the ground of the state of the nation. He described the hospitals as “mere consulting clinics”. Almost 40 years after, they are worse, such that even the clinic at Aso Villa was described as worth nothing by the President’s wife. Also, while appearing before the National Assembly to answer questions on government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Secretary to the Government of the Federation who also presides over the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 said he never knew things were so bad. Since then, what has changed?

While South Africa is already producing vaccines for the population under licence, Nigeria is content with shopping for handouts from the international community. The hospitals, public and private, are worse than consulting clinics and the net effect is that many Nigerians have to jet out to Egypt, South Africa, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany and the United States for medical treatment. Previous governments had paid lip service to improving the sector. During the Obasanjo administration, there was a vaunted plan to upgrade some teaching hospitals to centres of excellence. The proof that the attempt failed is that almost N600 billion is said to be lost to medical tourism yearly. Dignitaries, both in the public and private sectors, including the President, regularly troop out for medical care. The National Health Insurance Scheme is yet to be fully developed and embraced and many Nigerians die of preventable and curable diseases. In recent times, cholera has been ravaging the land; Lassa fever remains a killer and malaria continues to snuff life out of infants and children under five years of age. Consequently, life expectancy in the country is one of the lowest in the world. Even in Africa, while the average life expectancy in Algeria is 78 years, 63 years in Ghana, it is 55.7 in Nigeria.

These support the need for sincere health reform. There are low hanging fruits to be plucked by the Osinbajo committee by reviewing the recommendations of previous panels. There is no reason to wait for a committee to make the National Health Insurance Scheme or the National Health Act work. All it takes is commitment. President Buhari has only 20 months to exit office. He should bequeath to the country a much improved health sector, thus improving quality of living and life expectancy.

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