A Pharmacist, Mr. Olayiwola Malik, has called on the Federal Government to redesign the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to meet global best practices.
Mr. Malik made the appeal on Monday in Ilorin in an interview with newsmen.
He urged the government to make the scheme more effective and workable in the country as it was being implemented in Europe and other parts of the world.
He noted the aim of government on the scheme was to reduce the cost of medicare, but said that the biggest problem pharmacists were facing in implementing the programme has to do with the point of payment from the intermediaries or vendors of the scheme.
He lamented that most of these vendors of the scheme have defaulted in the payment of the money meant for the scheme or even at worst, absconded at the detriment of the pharmacy who supplied them drugs.
He suggested that federal government should introduce a cooperative bank that should be paying the pharmacists monthly or quarterly so as to ensure full success of the programme.
Besides, the pharmacist urged the federal government to urgently address the rising rate of dollar against the Naira.
This, he said, was affecting and killing the health sector in particular and other areas of the economy.
Mr. Malik attributed the high rate of deaths in the country to the high cost of drugs, which he said most patients could not afford and therefore resorted to local herbs.
According to him, most patients that use herbs ended up destroying their kidney and liver.
Similarly, the medical practitioner advocated a reverse in the appointment of doctors as Chief Medical Directors of hospitals in the country to what it was in the past where directors of administration were at the helm of affairs of teaching hospitals and not necessarily a medical doctor.
Olayiwola Malik, who is the owner of Momrota Pharmacy in Ilorin, described the health unit across the world as a circle which involves pharmacists, doctors, nurses, laboratory attendants and even the cleaners and stewards.
He flayed the belief that doctors were more superior to others in the medical circle.
He explained that doctors always claimed superiority over pharmacists because in the past, early doctors trained early pharmacists who were then referred to as dispensers.
According to him, medical doctors are much involved in politics which gave an advantage over other medical practitioners.
