The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, on Monday, in Abuja, warned that Nigeria risks another pandemic if it fails to take advantage of opportunities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic to develop its health infrastructure.
He raised the alarm while inaugurating the Board of Experts (BoE) of the Healthcare Sector Research and Development Intervention Scheme (HSRDIS).
According to him, if Nigeria loses the sense of the moment, it may be confronted with another pandemic and the nation will find itself starting all over again.
“If we had built on the experiences of Ebola and other epidemics that we have dealt with in the past, probably today we wouldn’t have started with about two molecular laboratories for the testing of COVID-19.”
“If you travel the shores of this country, you will find out that we have over 10,000 public primary healthcare centres scattered inwards and villages across the country, ill-equipped, ineffective and not being put into use but we keep building them,” Mustapha said.
He urged members of the board to also look at governance structures in the healthcare sector apart from your primary responsibilities.
He said, “COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses in our health system, in our governance system, in our security infrastructure, in our inclusiveness and creating social safety nets for our people.
“It will be the greatest disappointment of our time and of our generation if we do not seize the opportunity of the moment to redress all the deficiencies of the defects that we’ve had in our health and other infrastructure in this country.”
