Our public primary health centres ill-equipped – SGF

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, has 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 said the over 10, 000 public primary health centres in the country were ill-equipped and ineffective; while the government was busy building more.

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He said this in Abuja on Monday while inaugurating the Board of Experts of the Healthcare Sector Research and Development Intervention Scheme.

“If we had built on the experiences of Ebola and other epidemics that we’ve 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’ll 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 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’ll 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.”