By Oluwakemi Oladipo
Lagos – Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria (AGPMPN), Lagos Chapter, has urged government to collaborate with private hospitals to achieve universal health coverage in the country.
The chairman of the association, Dr Tunji Akintade, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday to commemorate the 2018 World Health Day.
NAN reports that the World Health Day is a global health awareness day celebrated annually on April 7.
The Theme for the 2018 World Health Day is `Universal Health Coverage: Everyone, everywhere’, with the slogan “Health for all’’.
Akintade said that government’s collaboration with private practitioners would help the health system to drive health to the right destination for the citizens.
“Every Nigerian deserves quality health service but the major way of achieving universal health coverage is by providing quality and accessible health.
“In Nigeria health system, the level of care is distinct because we operate at three levels which are primary, secondary and tertiary.
“Other developed countries have gone beyond that because they only have one health system.
“The health challenges that gave us bad indices are around primary and secondary levels, hence the need to invest critically at these two levels is very important.
“ Luckily the private facilities are grounded in this region.
“There is need for the government to work with private facilities in order to achieve good universal health coverage in the country,’’ he said.
He urged government at all levels to be sincere and transparent enough so that people could access quality healthcare services at all times.
“For us to achieve universal health coverage, education also have to be improved, myths have to be changed, traditional birth attendance have to be enlightened through quality education, among others,’’
