Description
Nigeria has one of the most complicated healthcare systems in the continent. Public health in Nigeria is run by three tiers of the government. The Federal government is responsible for coordinating affairs in Federal Medical Centers and University Teaching Hospitals. The state government is responsible for running general hospitals while the local government is responsible for dispensaries.
The LGA level is the least funded and organised level of government and therefore has not been able to properly finance and organise primary healthcare, creating a very weak base for the healthcare system.
Nigeria is one of the developing countries faced with the “double burden” of persisting high prevalence of communicable diseases and rising prevalence of non-communicable diseases. Key health dicators such as maternal and infant mortality are worse than the Sub-Saharan African average and Nigeria is not on track to achieving most of the health-related MDGs by 2015.
According to a 2015 BMI report, there were an estimated 3,534 hospitals in 2014, 950 of which were in the public sector. These included 54 federal tertiary hospitals comprising 20 teaching hospitals, 22 federal medical centers, three national orthopedic hospitals, the National Eye Centre, the National ENT Centre and 7 psychiatric hospitals, which are overseen by the Hospital Services Department of the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH).
The private sector is the dominant provider of care in many areas, accounting for the greater part of secondary care facilities. In 2005, the FMOH estimated that there were around 9,000 private health facilities, but information on their location and the level of care provided was patchy. Private health facilities are thought to include around 2,600 private hospitals and clinics.
Nigeria had an estimated 134,000 hospital beds in 2014, equal to 0.8 per thousand populations, which is well below the rate for the African region. The number of hospital beds is estimated to have grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.8 percent since 2009, slightly higher than population growth but at an insufficiently high rate to have a significant impact on the population bed ratio.
Although recent data on the number and growth rate of diagnostic centers and laboratories is not available, there has been a visible growth in the number of private diagnostic centers and laboratories in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Kano, Enugu and all the other major cities.
The 2008 Demographic and health survey showed that the private sector provides over 65% of healthcare services. This is even more for the poorest quintile at 72%. Among the private sector providers, pharmacies and patent medicine vendors (PMVs) play a critical role. Pharmacies and PMVs provided 39% of the services to children with fever in 008, compare to public clinics 37%, private clinics 13%, and shops.
In most of the hospitals in Anambra State, only tests for malaria and sputum AFB are done and a few facility of X-Ray is available. A limited number of hospitals conduct only a very basic repertoire of other tests.
As a result, doctors at these institutions have little choice other than that of referring patients to private sector diagnostic centres outside the state or do without the much-needed tests.
This practice creates a problem in introducing proper treatment protocol in time. Considering the existing situation, there is a dire need for adequately equipped full service diagnostic facilities in Anambra State.
The objective of this initiative is to ensure greater access of the people to quality diagnostic services at affordable cost.
The services to be offered includes CT scan, Ultra sound scan, Gastroscopy and colonoscopy and it was assumed that the facility would operate for 300 working days per annum serving five hundred (500), five hundred (500), one hundred (100) and one hundred (100) patients for the CT scan, Ultra sound scan, Gastroscopy and colonoscopy services respectively.
The machines required for operations are CT Scan machine, ultrasound machine, gastroscopy machine, colonoscopy machine, generator, transformer and project vehicles.
This report seeks to examine the financial viability or otherwise of establishing a medical diagnostic centre in Awka, the Anambra state capital.
