NDDC: Beyond Annual Ritual Of Free Healthcare Outreaches

According to the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Professor Nelson Brambaifa, the interventionist agency is poised to conduct soon, its 2019 free healthcare outreach for Niger Delta communities. This disclosure came during a courtesy visit to his office by the Vice Chairman of the Rivers State Chapter of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Dr Ebbi Robinson. In a statement made available to journalists and signed by Nancy Ijaopo, a media aide to the NDDC MD, the agency also intends to renovate and equip some cottage hospitals across the nine mandate states under its statutory purview. The envisaged free healthcare exercise is a continuation of an annual ritual by the commission since 2004 and comprises a one-week intensive delivery of free healthcare services to as many patients that can be mobilised to a location. Apparently, the locations for launching the exercise vary from year to year. By the commission’s claim, the free healthcare exercise has benefitted over two million people in the oil rich zone since its inception in 2004.
In its contemporary setting, a free health care programme enjoys significant merit within any benefitting community as it provides them with waivers of whole or portions of patient payable fees for medical treatment. For the Niger Delta area and even across the entire country, the waiving of medical fees provides invaluable relief to beneficiaries, by reducing the financial burdens many of them face in sourcing money for medical treatment. In any cases even when the money may be available, the facilities for medical service delivery are far and not immediately accessible, thereby leaving patients in a quandary.
In another vein, budgetary considerations have been cited as restricting the free healthcare service in variety and scope. Hence, for instance, the NDDC exercise lasts for just a week in each particular year, and the range of services is similarly limited, making the entire free healthcare service a largely salutary measure when compared to the humongous scope of healthcare challenges of the Niger Delta region. Among the typical challenges of the zone is the difficult terrain which prevents easy movement of the sick from home to hospital. Added to this is its serial neglect by past administrations at the federal level with the attendant result of denial of critical infrastructure including hospitals in the zone.
It was to improve on the situation that the commission since 2010 planned to establish world class medical facility in the region in collaboration with foreign interests. Nine years since that initiative was born, it is yet to see the light of day, leaving the current leadership the opportunity to write their names in history by changing the project’s history. Hence, while the 2019 free healthcare exercise may engage the sights of the NDDC leadership for now, nothing precludes them from giving life and flesh to the proposed worldclass healthcare institution. Among the reasons for fast-tracking the establishment of the envisaged world-class healthcare facility, is the need to reverse the narrative that the annual free healthcare service is the flagship of the commission’s health management agenda for the region.
In its operational blueprint and budgetary proposals, the commission promotes a robust agenda for healthcare management which spans the entire gamut of areas needy of intervention. Regrettably, however, the story of project management by the NDDC especially before the advent of the present management, has not been without multiplicity of instances of less than optimal discretion, with the attendant consequence that several projects of strategic significance suffer avoidable compromise and even outright truncations. This syndrome in the operations of the commission reportedly reached its apogee from June 2015 when crass politicisation of its leadership became an unbridled affair. It is therefore not unlikely that several projects including the envisaged world-class healthcare facility, may have ended up as mere still births.
However, with the sterling antecedents in the demanding academic terrain of the current Managing Director of NDDC, Professor Nelson Brambrainfa as a world acclaimed pharmacist, the game changing prospects of the expected healthcare facility cannot be lost on him. While the commission remains justified in paying attention to cottage hospitals which are invaluable to the grassroot communities, it is also time to look beyond baseline targets.