The Nigerian Medical Association has called on the Buhari administration to privatize Government Hospitals. The national president of the association, Uche Ojinmah made the call urging President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime to consider privatizing the national hospitals.
News Agency of Nigeria reports that “Mr. Ojinmah stressed it had become necessary for both the teaching and public hospitals to have the needed funds for effective
operation.”
“As far back as 2014, we wrote a compendium on how to fix these teaching hospitals and public hospitals and there are two options if the government wants to fund it properly. Go for 15 percent of the national budget for the health sector and also release the budgeted funds because budgeting is different from cash backing,” the NMA president explained.
He added, “So if they can fund it well and release the necessary cash to back it up then these institutions can come up to speed.”
He also suggested, “Or we can go for graded privatization where they sell 51 percent of the shares. Of course, they should fix it up a bit so that it could fetch some money. They get a core investor or sell 51 percent of the shares to the core investor,”.
“If the government does not want to leave totally it can keep a certain percentage, maybe 30 percent so that with that they can still moderate the price so that we don’t go for full gains to the detriment of the people.”
According to him, the remaining 19 percent should be sold to the workers to retain the hospital so that they know they have a stake in the business and give it their best.
“So now, having a representative on that board as government will help to moderate the price so that there is that human face which is what a doctor brings to heading a hospital,” stated Mr. Ojinmah.
He added that boosting the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) would bring more people into the health insurance net and give them better service at reduced costs.
“So if you privatize these hospitals and you channel the money, you would have budgeted for them every year for the next five years into the NHIA to capture more people under that, it will make it easier for them to assess those hospitals,” he pointed out.
“With this, it will be easier for the people to get treatment, and if you do that and personnel are well paid, everybody knows you are here to do your job, the major shareholder can decide that he wants to buy automated equipment, you cannot stop him.”
On how the primary healthcare centers would fare under such privatization arrangements, the NMA president said it was time to divest the government’s interest in PHCs as running them should be local governments’ concern.
“If you want me to leave Abuja as a doctor to run a PHC somewhere in the rural area, I think that there should be extra allowance for that,” he said. “It makes simple business sense to say that those going out there should be given a rural posting allowance that is heavy so that they can attract personnel to the PHCs but the government does not want to do that.”
(NAN)
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