The Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, has directed teaching hospitals as well as all government-owned health care systems to treat indigent patients without charges, emphasising that poor Nigerians should not be denied treatment.
The minister, who gave the directive during an inspection visit to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) Idi-Araba on Friday, also affirmed the federal government’s commitment to instituting a compulsory health insurance scheme for all Nigerians.
The minister said, “Every indigent Nigerian must be treated at our hospitals without charges. All government-owned hospitals are directed not to deny poor Nigerians treatment because of money. Nigerians, who are poor, should enjoy our services”.
The minister, who spoke on the backdrop of the massive poverty indicators, which puts 70 per cent of Nigerians under poverty-line, that is about 100 million poor Nigerians, said that the government under President Mohammed Buhari was committed towards a responsive intervention on poverty beginning from basic healthcare services. He, however, appealed to Nigerians not to sabotage the process as only “the truly poor” will be beneficiary of the new directive.
“We are appealing to Nigerians to be genuine to the system because we cannot take care of everybody free of charge. For those who are truly poor, we have a social system that will identify them, locate their homes and take care of them,” he said.
Adewole also stated that the new administration would focus on building over 10,000 primary healthcare centres across the nation in two years in order to cater for the healthcare needs of the average Nigerian. He said that the ministry was finalising paper works to commence the construction and rehabilitation on the 1st of May, 2016.
“With respect to the public healthcare centres, the government will make functional 10,000 primary healthcare centres out of the 30,000 out-of-service centres in the country in the next two years. We want to have one functional public healthcare centre per ward. It is not a new idea, what is new is our strong determination to implement it. When we reach these 10,000 public healthcare centres, we will be reaching over 100 million Nigerians and as an administration that considers the poor, we want to give them free health care.
“We have submitted the proposal to the presidency and it is under review. We are looking for how to sustain this project,” he said.
Source: Tribune