Specialist Urges Govts To Invest In Primary Healthcare

A  specialist in family medicine, Dr Timipre Flint, has called on the federal and state governments to increase the investment in primary healthcare in order to tackle the nation’s health challenges.
Flint, who made the call during a chat with The Tide in Port Harcourt, Monday, noted that most of the challenges in the health sector were at the primary level recalling digestive diseases and malnutrition as prevalent and demanding quick attention to save the nation’s health sector.
He said, in the health sector, the primary health is very sensitive and it is important that care be given to it because most of the health challenges are graded at that level so that its neglect will only result in careless loss of lives and a defeat to the nation’s health sector. It is there lack of  necessary that the investment in that segment be increased to bridge the gap”.
While noting with dismay the high level of wastage in government owned health agencies and parastatals, Flint warned against such act by the government health personnel to ensure that the various interventions from both donor-agencies and partners to the sector achieve the desired goals.
Flint further urged  governments at all levels to adopt a uniformed approach to health matters as another means of tackling Health challenges in the nation.
According to him some of the challenges in the nation’s health sector include lack of a uniformed remuneration for health practitioners, modern equipment, training infrastructural decay and inadequate funding.
“A situation where you introduce what we call divide and rule, you negotiate with this group within the same sector and it gets some perks and allowances and others do not get is a problem. I think that every negotiation should be holistic and where best practices is instituted, the sector forges ahead with less challenges,” he stated.