By Ijeoma UKAZU
The Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, PSN, has said the deplorable state of Nigeria’s health care system is due to the use of an outdated University Teaching Hospital Act of 1985.
Making this call recently in Lagos at the 2022 annual luncheon at Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja, the Lagos state chapter chairman, Pharm. Gbolagade Iyiola, said that the Act was outdated and urgently needed an amendment.
The pharmacist further linked what he described as the manipulation of physicians to the Act enacted by the military four decades ago, being part of the reasons to effect an amendment to the Act.
He pointed out that the existing University Teaching Hospital Act was a military creation which was invented as decree 10 of 1985, adding that, this piece of obnoxious legislation has been the albatross on the neck of our health system for 37 destructive years.
According to him, “It remains the foundation for the dangerous manipulation of physicians in Nigeria who with the tacit support of government at all levels interpreted ‘medially qualified’ as a phraseology that implies bagging of MBBS or MBChB or its equivalent in whatever form.
“This clause has been employed in truncating normative civility in our collapsed health sector where physician emperors are foisted overall structures of healthcare at federal, state, and local government levels. Before 1985, it was health administrators or managers who steer the ship of our various health workers to stick and excel in their areas of due competencies.”
Iyiola, while appraising the role of Nigeria’s founding fathers in berthing what he called a virile health system, regretted that the Nigerian health system collapsed following what he also said was a forced physician takeover, lamenting the negative health indices in the aftermath of the development as reasons to amend this Act.
“To the eternal glory of the founding fathers of our nation, we had a virile health system which produced strong health institutions like University College Hospital, UCH, Ibadan which was rated at a crucial juncture as one of the top five Health Facilities in the commonwealth under the watch of an administrator designated as hospital governor.”
The PSN Lagos chair also called for the establishment of the Faculty of Pharmacy at the state-owned university, Lagos State University, recalling that members of the PSN in the state had called for the establishment of the faculty when Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu visited them during the 2015 gubernatorial campaign.
According to Iyiola, “In 2019 when His Excellency, Babajide Sanwo-Olu visited and solicited the support of members of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (Lagos State Branch) in the build-up to the governorship election in the state, members canvassed the need for an autonomous and approvable Faculty of Pharmacy in the Centre of Excellence.
“Today, we observed that lesser endowed states continue to establish pharmacy schools which are genuinely needed to stem the tide of a whooping deficiency in health manpower needs. At today’s rate of one pharmacist to over 5,000 patients, Nigeria seriously falls short of the current World Health Organisation, WHO, recommendation.
“We at the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria believe albeit strongly that an improvement in pharmaceutical manpower manufactured drugs and phytomedicines, community pharmacists who can amplify services in the rural areas which continue to be neglected.
“Our profession continues to strategise in 2022 through retreats put together by the Nigeria Academy of Pharmacy and National Colloquium slated for later this year by the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria.
“Interestingly, these power-packed reform programmes will hold in Lagos and logically we continue to imagine that the good people of Lagos must be the first and prime beneficiaries of goodies that were baked and brewed right here in their domain.”
