By Zayamu Hassan
The Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria (AGPMPN), has launched an intervention fund to save the lives of mothers and children.
The President of AGPMPN, Dr Iyke Odo, disclosed this while speaking at the one-day round table dialogue on private sector intervention in health care in Nigeria, in Abuja, Thursday.
He said the intervention was in an effort to halt the worsening maternal and infant mortality in Nigeria,
He, however, called for the establishment of the Health Bank so that private practitioners in the health sector can have access to loans with minimal interest rates.
“As part of marking the great milestone of a centenary, we have decided to partner with stakeholders and Nigerians to rise to support the efforts of our government to improve the nation’s healthcare delivery.
“We desire this specifically to support maternal and child care and temper their very high mortality rates that have become a moral national burden.
“We want to build capacity across the largely ill-equipped care givers in our rural communities, improve the quality of care to our pregnant mothers, save their lives and save the lives of their children.
“We project to save one million Nigerian women and children over the next five years. This is the SAVE ONE MILLION NIGERIAN MOTHERS INITIATIVE.
“In like manner, we desire also to grow awareness, understanding, acceptance and support for health insurance by the Nigerian people as a means for actualizing Universal Health Coverage by 2030.
“This is our AGPMPN AWAKE NIGERIA PROJECT 2030. It is a nationwide media publicity engagement to educate 100 million Nigerians in 5 years.
“This is why we have reached out to you and are still reaching out to charitable Nigerians and residents and organizations, patrons of healthcare, friends at home and abroad, to donate to the Private Sector Healthcare Intervention Trust Fund, the reason for the launching of today.”
Dr Odo explained that all countries of the world whose health system is doing well, the private practitioners benefited from the deliberate support by the government both financially in terms of infrastructure.
The one-day dialogue, according to him, “is to dialogue with critical stakeholders and come out with a blueprint, a communique and a way out and then meet the government in the middle to say these are alternatives ways we can do things.
“One of those alternatives is that there is nowhere in the world where the health sector is succeeding when the private sector is not championing it.
“But the private sector cannot champion a course in which they do not have enablement. We have come to know that the biggest business of government is taxation, but the government cannot depend on taxation and succeed except is has empowered its people to do good business in a good environment enabled by infrastructure and good financial policy.
“By this dialogue, we are calling on both the federal, state government and local governments to come to the understanding that the private sector is the future of the healthcare system.
“They should support the private sector. We need a health bank just like the way we have Bank of Agriculture, we have bank of industry.
“We need to support the health system. That is the secret of India, Europe and America. Doctors should not be going to the bank to borrow money with these interest rate as oil companies,” he appealed.
