Nigeria has been investing too little and inefficiently in
the health of her people, so says the Director, Health, Nutrition, and
Population Global Practice, World Bank Group, Dr. Olusoji Adeyi, NaijaAgroNet reports.
Adeyi in a keynote address entitled “Financing Universal
Health Coverage in Nigeria” to the 2018 Nigeria Health Financing Forum in
Abuja, said recently that Nigeria is underperforming in health financing when
compared to other Lower-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) and countries in the
Upper-Middle-Income (UMIC) Group.
As said by him, investing in health would lead to economic
growth, reductions in mortality account for about 11 per cent of recent
economic growth in low-income and middle-income countries as measured in their
national income accounts.
This, he said, would see to a more complete picture of the
value of health investments over a time period given by the growth in a
country's ‘full income,’ which is the income growth measured in national income
accounts plus the Value of Additional Life Years (VLYs) gained in that period.
Dr. Adeyi noted that between 2000 and 2011, about 24 per
cent of the growth in full income in low-income and middle-income countries
resulted from VLYs gained.
According to him, the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) means
that all people could use the essential health services they need, of
sufficient quality to be effective, while also ensuring that the use of these
services does not expose the user to financial hardship.
This definition of UHC, he said, embodies three related
objectives, including equity in access to health services; the quality of
health services should be good; and People should be protected against
financial-risk.
Further, he explained that equity in access implies that
everyone who needs services should get them, not only those who can pay for
them, while the quality of health services should be good enough to improve the
health of those receiving services; whereas, people should be protected against
financial-risk, to ensure that the cost of using services does not put people
at risk of financial harm.
Chuks Egbune/GEE