Toward Achieving MDGs

Among the contemporary international development yardsticks which the Federal Government is striving at attaining, one that stands  out clearly in the  transformation agenda  of the Jonathan administration is the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the year 2015.
The  first of the eight MDGs which were  officially   established after the millennium summit of  the United  Nations in 2000 following the adoption of the United Nations  Millennium  Declaration     include the eradication of extreme  poverty and hunger, which entails cutting by   half by 2015 the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day. Other goals are; achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, the reduction of   child mortality rates and improving  maternal  health.
In  fact,  since the  appointment of  Dr (Mrs)  Precious K. Gbeneoel as the  Senior Special Assistant to  President Goodluck Jonathan, the SSA   has left no stone unturned in the drive towards  the administration’s objective of raising the  standard  of living of people  at the grassroot  particularly the most  vulnerable, women and children in the rural areas. Thus, in recognition of the commitment of the Presidency toward  achieving the MDGs, the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan  was recently honoured by the Food Agriculture  Organisation, (FAO) in recognition of the country’s effort at reducing  the  number of people who are suffering  from chronic hunger. But the President  was also  quick in noting that in achieving  other millennium goals, the combating of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other  diseases, ensuring environmental sanitation, improving maternal health and  reducing  child  mortality were needed  to be done.
In fact, the   millennium development agency under  Dr. Precious Gbeneoel has adopted  innovative strategies aimed at reaching  out to women in rural areas. For example, one fantastic prospect of the Millenium Development Agency (MDA), aimed at bringing people out of poverty is the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) through which people received some stipend following the fulfilment of laid down  conditions. One of the MDA  requirements insists that parents should send their  children  to school as a pre-condition for receiving  monthly stipend. Pregnant  women are encouraged to attend anti-natal  clinics before getting their monthly  stipend, while mothers are expected to take their babies for immunisation before they get their  monthly stipend. The MDA   also encourages  farmers by  training them  and  giving as much as N100,000 to a farmer for investment in agriculture  to  help boost food production and engender  good nutrition.
But one snag that obviously the MDA must work hard to surmount in conjunction with the Federal Government is the input of medical personnel toward  realising  the millennium development goals. This is crucial  because  the acute shortage of medical  personnel  at all levels  of society  causes great  concern if available  statistics are anything to go by.
At a press briefing which  preceded her 53rd Annual General Conference and delegates meeting tagged “Eko 2013,” President of the Nigeria Medical Association, (NMA), Dr Osahon Enabulele noted that low budgetary allocation for health, shortage of human resources, lack of clear-cut provisions in the country’s constitution and non-existence of functional primary healthcare services constituted major impediments in the health sector and can constitute a road-block in achieving Millennium Development Goals.  To punctuate this assertion, Enabulele reeled  out troubling figures on the medical sector that must bother any Nigerian   who cares about improvement in healthcare delivery  services.
According to him, of the 65,000 medical doctors registered by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), only 25,000 (38.46%) are currently   practicising in the country, which means that 40,000 (61.54%) have gone abroad for greener pastures. The NMA President did not mince words in asserting that  following the low budget  for health and shortage of human health resources, the country  cannot achieve  any of the   Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
This position which is rooted in the fact that most rural communities  do not  have doctors,  aside from the inadequacy in the city, a situation which has  helped  in no small measure in the preponderance of quacks, has impacted negatively on the ineffective  health care delivery in the country.
“There is poor primary and secondary healthcare delivery in this country. A trip round our country shows that primary care in Nigeria is virtually non-existent. If  that sector that takes  responsibility of over 70 per cent of the  country’s population is not functioning, that means  people have resulted  to quacks  and have  besieged the tertiary health care facilities for cases that should have  been handled  at primary and secondary level,” Dr Enabulele stated.
Without mincing words, our healthcare delivery system needs to be overhauled to meet the MDG’s. One way of doing this is to equip our hospitals to make them functional with adequate personnel.