President, Healthcare Federation of Nigeria (HFN), Dr. Pamela Ajayi, has stressed the need for private sector participation in order to develop the nation’s health sector.
Speaking at a breakfast meeting held in Lagos last week, she observed that private sector accounts for 70 per cent of the work done in the nation’s health sector.
According to her, “people don’t realise how much the private sector is doing and how much more we can do and that is why as an organisation, we advocate private sector involvement and understanding of how the private sector can take us to next level. The private sector accounts for 70 per cent of the work that is done in the health sector and I think the key thing now is recognition.”
Speaking further, she said HFN has been able to provide an opportunity for the private sector to meet directly with the highest levels of government in terms of health and directly present their issues.
“What is great is that we are getting resolutions, responses and it looks as if we are going to be able to resolve a number of issues from this meeting.” She stated.
In his speech, Chairman, Board of Trustees, HFN, Mr. Asue Ighodalo, said there is urgent need to bridge present regulatory gaps in order to prevent quackery and mediocrity.
Represented by Dr. Richard Ajayi, he said, “we cannot underestimate the importance of government policy in delivery of health care service in Nigeria, we know that a lot of our patients leave Nigeria every year and spend around a trillion-dollar abroad on medical tourism, the truth is that all these services they travel abroad for, we have people that are striving very hard to provide them here in Nigeria, but the issue is just that patients don’t trust the system as much as they should do.”
Conclusively, he said the question is how the stakeholders could build trust in the healthcare industry and ensure that a lot of the money that travel abroad is retained in the country.
