Experts call for quality healthcare delivery through improved regulations

Lara Adejoro

Experts in the health sector have called for improved regulations of health institutions for quality healthcare delivery in the country.

They made the call at the Lunch and Learn stakeholder engagement meeting organised by the Clina-Lancet laboratories in Abuja on Thursday.

Speaking at the event, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Cedarcrest Hospitals, Dr. Felix Ogedegbe said Nigeria’s healthcare service delivery is poorly regulated.

He said, “If you move around in the West Africa region, Africa, or the rest of the world, you will find out that Nigeria’s healthcare space is one of the unregulated spaces in the world. People can do anything they like, chemists can do whatever they like, pharmacists can do whatever they like, and hospitals can do anything they like. So, regulation is very important because it keeps people safe in the healthcare space.

“Also, it helps people to invest in the sector. If you are investing billions of naira in the healthcare space, and others can do anything, then it means you won’t get anything, but if you are investing and there are regulations that make sure that the interface is created for people to come to you for services, you will more likely invest.”

According to him, the lack of regulation is stalling the growth of the healthcare system in the country.

“If you look at the drug space, for instance, once you go out of the urban areas, you know what happens with patent medicine, you will know that the regulation is not as you expect.

“In other countries, the definition of a hospital is clear, so the regulation space in the country is very poor at the moment,” Dr. Ogedegbe said.

On his part, the Chief Executive Officer of Clina-Lancet laboratories, Dr Olayemi Dawodu, said there is a need for partnerships in the health sector to achieve universal health coverage.

She noted that the engagement meeting provides a forum for interactions with stakeholders and customers to provide health education for excellent service delivery in the country.

“It’s very important that each of us practice what we say that we will do very well. Not just that, it must be strategic partnerships so that we can jointly provide universal health coverage and it is one of the driving forces for the Sustainable Development Goals that has been put out by the United Nations.

“Doing it alone is less of an impact than when you do things together because you can cover more grounds in a short time,” Dr. Dawodu said.

She also pointed out that the clinical laboratory services are not as competitive as expected and that there is a need for regulation.

“We need to educate the communities on the importance of looking out for facilities that have accreditation.

“There is competition in the clinical laboratory services space but I don’t see them as viable until we begin to have basic standards for accreditation,” she added.

For the Director of Medical Laboratory Services, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr. Kingsley Odiabara, there is a need to regulate the operations of clinical laboratory services.

Represented by the Deputy Director of Hospital Services in the ministry, Dr. Janet Agba, he said, “We must regulate laboratory services. For instance, you see a non-governmental organisation doing one particular thing and you see another NGO doing the same thing.

“So, we want to regulate who does what and the areas people should focus on. With that, accessing healthcare will be easy even in hard-to-reach areas. When everyone focuses on doing what he or she knows how to do best, the country will be better and there will be universal health coverage.”

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