There is no doubt, purpose leadership at the top is very important for rapid improvement of the lot in the health sector in Nigeria. However, working from the bottom appear to be the way out under the present situation. Therefore, I am advocating for a shift in approach. Rather than wait for the political leadership of the country to get its acts together, which may not happen anytime soon, we should look inward at individual levels and see what we can do to transform.

The key to any successful health system is the human resource - both medical and non-medical - and we do not lack these resources as much as we believe, especially, with the improvement in information and communication technology globally and even here in Nigeria.

So my first suggestion is making the most of what we have on ground at the moment and magnifying the reach through tapping in the various communication media.

I will use a tertiary hospital as an example especially teaching hospital because that is where we have the highest concentration of the needed ingredient identified above - health human resource. These collection of experts are making a lot of effort in addressing the crisis in the health sector but not enough had been tapped even on-site at the teaching hospitals not to talk of the untapped potential of reaching out to areas that are not so resourceful. There is at least one tertiary hospital in each state of the country and the skilled manpower in each of these hospital if hanessed well can do a lot tranforming health fortunes of the states where they are located. But this had to be done intelligently and syatematically. What if all the paediatricians in a tertiary hospital come together and assess the situation of children in their catch area and not just a case of severe malnutrition that arrived late and despite their best effort could not rescue? I am talking about the mortality meetings. What if each specialty does the same? What if select group comprising of the different specialty come together and coordinate their efforts. The impact of these can be far reaching. It may sound easy and doubtful but I have seen and worked where this is applied and it cost very little but the impact is great.

Will be comming with more suggestions on how to tap into ICT to further amplify the impact and some starting points...

Comments are must welcome!

Introduction

This blog will be dedicated to addressing myriads of problems facing the health sector in Nigeria focusing mainly on solutions. I know its difficult, but I believe it will start somewhere.