Guardian

EKITI State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, was among several Nigerians who scored Nigeria’s health indices low in a gathering of health experts at the 8th memorial lecture of   Nigeria’s former Minister of Health, late Prof. Olikoye Ransome – Kuti organised by Women’s Health and Action Research Centre (WHARC) in Lagos.

Fayemi, who was the guest lecturer Tuesday on a lecture titled “Tackling the Challenges Of Health And Inequity In

Ekiti State”, said “Nigeria’s healthcare delivery performance index is still struggling with those of war torn and less endowed countries even after 52 years of independence,” adding that “many factors and challenges have conspired against the realisation of the laudable objective of the Walter – Harkness 10-year development plan and the enunciation of the first National Health Development Plan in 1960.”

He listed the problems facing Nigeria healthcare system to include lack of “good governance at all levels of government”, policy inconsistency, lack of political commitment, corruption, infrastructural decay, undue politicisation of the health sector and declining professionalism in the healthcare system.

Other challenges, according to Fayemi, included weak co-ordination, integration and implementation of health policies and programmes; inadequate budgetary provisions for health, inequitable distribution of the health workforce and weak primary and secondary levels of care with a weak referral system.

Ransome-Kuti, a paediatrician, was appointed Minister of Health in 1985, a position he used to provide a footholds for the institutionalsiation of primary health care (PHC) in Nigeria, acting as advocate, implementer and a key policy proponent on all aspect of primary healthcare. Ransome-Kuti was later appointed the Chairman of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), a post he held until his death.

Chairman of the occasion and Nigeria’s Nobel Prize Winner, Prof. Wole Soyinka, who was represented by his son and Ogun State Health Commissioner, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, said that social injustice was killing Nigerians on grand scale, adding, “health inequality is part of that social injustice”.

The younger Soyinka said there were a lot of burdens placed on him by the life and works of late Ransome-Kuti to develop PHC in Ogun State.

WHARC’s Executive Director, Prof. Cyril Mokwenye, described   Ransome-Kuti as the man who championed the interest of maternal health, exclusive breastfeeding and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) reduction in Nigeria.

Some of the attendees of the event included a member Ekiti State House of Assembly, Dr. Omirin Adewale, Provost, College of Medicine University of Lagos (CMUL), Prof. Folashade Ogunsola represented by CMUL’s Dean of Clinical Sciences, Prof. Afolabi Lesi, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Prof. Akin Osibogun, Ford Foundation Programme Officer, Prof. Friday Okonfua, Country Director of Population Council, Dr. Babatunde Ahonsi among other several dignitaries.