Ibrahim Oloriegbe, senator representing Kwara central at the National Assembly, has explained why it is difficult to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) in Nigeria.
The chairman of the senate committee on health, said this is because the state and local governments have abandoned their responsibilities for the federal government.
Oloriegbe stated this at 2023 Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Forum organised by the International Society for Media in Public Health (ISMPH) in Abuja on Thursday.
According to the lawmaker: “For us to be able to achieve UHC, we need health insurance. The essence is that everybody that requires health should get it without suffering catastrophe whatever, particularly financial,”
“We need to rethink about public financing, public funding of our healthcare, looking at our physical structure. It is a federation.
“We have federal, state and local governments. If you look at what is happening now, the sub-national levels are not committing as much as necessary to health and the national health act stated the responsibility of each level of government with the federal government having the responsibility for tertiary care.
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“About 70 percent of the health budget for the federal government goes to teaching hospitals and Federal Medical Centres, but of course, most of that is for salary purposes.”
He added: “Instead of them to allocate their own resources, the moment they see resources coming from the NPHCDA, they don’t allocate their own,”
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