TheCable

The national economic council (NEC) has approved plans to revamp 17,000 and 774 primary and secondary healthcare centres across the country.

The plan was approved at the 137th NEC meeting presided over by Vice-President Kashim Shettima in Abuja on Thursday.

Briefing the State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, Bala Mohammed, governor of Bauchi, said a presentation to the NEC highlighted the critical condition of the health sector.

“The presentation dissected in terms of very robust sector scan on health, from the tertiary to the primary level, looking at all the gaps, the problems and challenges of funding,” he said.

He said President Bola Tinubu seeks to create a coalition among interested parties for comprehensive, long-lasting changes.

On the source of funding, Mohammed said suggestions were made to use some taxes from communication and from airlines.

He added that taxes from the state governments were also considered to bridge the financial gaps plaguing the healthcare system.

“Certainly, we have a huge problem of human capital and attrition of experts and the need to develop a strategy to retain our experts to care for our health sector,” he said.

“So the presentation is a robust compact that looked at all the problems and challenges of the health sector, from financing, the human capital, from the supervisory point of view, and even on the leadership level, from the presidency to the local governments and the need for us as governors, local government even media, to put interest in the health sector.”

The Bauchi governor said while a democratic system like Nigeria’s cannot forcefully stop the outflux of healthcare professionals to other countries in search of greener pastures, plans are underway to manage the brain drain.

He urged Nigerian healthcare professionals to be more patriotic.

“Under democracy, you cannot stop anybody from going. As a state. I have built over 1,000 primary health centres, but I don’t have the doctors; I only have 100, as you said. But we used to have 3,000, they have run away,” he said.

“We are working very hard with this compact to develop a robust conditional service or scheme of service that will make them retained.

“But certainly, we’re urging Nigerians to know that your home is your home. And you must sit down here and work.

“Dr Pate left a very big job where he was earning two point something billion with Gavi to come on work with 500,000 a month. I think our doctors need to understand this and this is what we’re doing through persuasion.”