The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Health, Amos Magaji, has said that the legislative body is to push for the declaration of emergency in the health sector, to reposition it to meet the needs of Nigerians.
The National Assembly member, who said that resolving the problems in the nation’s health sector required a multi-pronged approach, assured that it would soon bounce back when the needful was done.
Magaji spoke at Federal Teaching Hospital Ido Ekiti on Wednesday when members of the committee, who were on oversight function of health facilities in the Southwest visited the institution.
FETHI Chief Medical Director, Prof. Adekunle Ajayi, who led the committee members on the inspection of facilities and projects in the hospital, listed the challenges of the health institution to include huge power costs, inadequate water supply, poor access roads, ecological challenges, uncertain manpower planning and need to upgrade the medical facility.
Facilities inspected by the House Committee members included the Isolation Ward, new Hispathology building; the new Accident and Emergency Ward, Assisted Reproductive Technology building, the 150-bedded building, Molecular Laboratory and Physiotherapy Building.
The lawmaker said that the yearly meagre budgetary provision for Health by the Federal Government was grossly inadequate to run the hospitals effectively and efficiently and could not serve the hospitals and patients in the country given its population.
He said, “The National Assembly, going forward, will be pushing for a state of emergency to be declared on Health because where we are now as a nation, it is not possible that health will be funded by the budget.
“We have gone around many health institutions and the problems are the same, lack of equipment, the manpower is a problem, equipment is a problem, the infrastructure in health institutions is also massively inadequate and of course very critical, the issue of power is killing the health institutions,” he said.
As part of efforts to resolve issues in the sector, Magaji said that the committee would invite the national leadership of all health unions to a meeting and all relevant MDAs over the issue of non-payment of some of the arrears, bonuses, and salaries of some health workers.
“This is not the time for health workers to work without receiving their payment. Then the issue of one-on-one replacement, we are looking at it. Immediately we get back to Abuja, we will call on all the relevant agencies to discuss how to remove all the bottlenecks in employment or replacement in the healthcare sector.
“We are also looking at how to expand the quotas in medical admission in universities. One of the solutions is the enrolment of students in medical colleges, making the study of medicine attractive in Nigeria. If we have many young people studying Medicine, even if there is japa, we will still have enough people to practice medicine in Nigeria.”
Magaji lauded FETHI management for utilizing the available space and the huge expansion, saying, “We are impressed with what they have done with the resources that the Federal Government has given them.”