BY SEYIFUNMI LUMEKO
Federal Government has said that the COVID-19 is an opportunity for Nigeria to develop its health infrastructure, adding that such opportunity if well utilised could curb future pandemic if it occurred.
Mr Boss Mustapha, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) pointed this out while inaugurating the Board of Experts (BoE) of the Healthcare Sector Research and Development Intervention Scheme (HSRDIS) in Abuja on Monday.
Mustapha said: “If we lose the sense of the moment, we will be confronted with another pandemic and we will find ourselves starting all over again.
He said the COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses in our health system, in our governance system, in our security infrastructure, in our inclusiveness and creating social safety nets for our people.
“If we had built on the experiences of Ebola and other epidemics that we have dealt with in the past, probably today we wouldn’t have started with about two molecular laboratories for the testing of COVID-19.”
“If you travel the shores of this country, you will find out that we have over 10,000 public primary healthcare centres scattered inwards and villages across the country, ill-equipped, ineffective and not being put into use but we keep building them, he said
He appealed to members of the Board of Experts to also look at governance structures in the healthcare sector apart from your primary responsibilities.
COVID-19 exposed the weaknesses in our health system, in our governance system, in our security infrastructure, in our inclusiveness and creating social safety nets for our people.”
He cautioned: “It will be the greatest disappointment of our time and of our generation if we do not seize the opportunity of the moment to redress all the deficiencies of the defects that we’ve had in our health and other infrastructure in this country.”
