Report: Systemic failure in Nigeria’s health sector fuelled by corruption, brain drain

BudgIT, in collaboration with Connected Development (CODE), has launched its healthcare sector accountability report.

The report, commissioned under the COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project (CTAP), highlights systemic challenges, and citizens’ perception of healthcare access and quality.

Speaking at the launch of the report on Wednesday, Mukhtar Modibo, community engagement manager at CODE, said findings from the report were gathered by visiting 783 primary healthcare centres in Nigeria. 

He said nine out of ten centres visited did not meet the minimum standard provided by the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), adding that some of those that met the standard are being funded by the community.

“Three hundred and fifty-five out of 783 primary healthcare centres do not have a pharmaceutical fridge for storage of COVID-19 vaccine. Some centres had the fridge but did not have power for the fridge. 35 percent of the pharmaceutical fridges were not functioning,” he said.

“Most doctors do not stay where the PHCs are situated and only 11 percent of PHCs visited meet the standard number of nurses, midwives and personnel in their facility. Also, only 64 percent of the PHCs visited had access to clean water.”

According to the report, access to healthcare in Nigeria for the poor and the vulnerable is challenging and where access is available, the quality is questionable.

The report said this “systemic failure” is “driven by decades of governance failures, corruption, failing infrastructure, policy inconsistencies, resourcing shortfalls, capacity gaps, brain drain, perennial strike actions and acute underinvestment, amongst other factors”.

“Across the country’s sub-national entities, medical facilities are concentrated in urban centres, while rural communities, with more substantial populations in some states, do not have functional health facilities and personnel to attend to their health needs. There is also the North-South geographical divide in the availability of healthcare services,” the report reads.

Giving recommendations based on the report, Iyanuoluwa Bolarinwa, assistant manager, international growth at BudgIT, said as a way to improve the primary healthcare sector, “we need laws to ban medical tourism in Nigeria because what you don’t use, you won’t make better”.

“If the N1.1 billion spent on medical tourism is spent in Nigeria, we will surely see a difference in our healthcare,” he said.

“The gross inadequacies in the sector have led to doctors leaving the country in droves, leaving a current ratio of 4000 Nigerians to 1 doctor at the moment. The lack of funding also remains a problem. The funding we have is insufficient but we believe that if we utilize the little we have, there will be a difference in the state of primary healthcare centres.”