By Naomi Chima & By Lara Adejoro
The Managing Director, Clina-Lancet Laboratories Nigeria, Olayemi Dawodu, has called for standardization across the Nigerian healthcare value chain. Dawodu made the call in a recent statement after the seventh Continuous Medical Education organised by the firm in Lagos.
Speaking against the backdrop of the theme: “Health Promotion: An Effective Tool for Global Health,” Dawodu said as healthcare transcends boundaries and communities, the onus lies on healthcare practitioners to incorporate best practices in keeping with current global standards. She added that while quality of health may be impacted by social and economic factors, healthcare practitioners must keep abreast of current innovations within the health sector to remain relevant in meeting the diverse healthcare needs of the public.
Speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the event, she said the event was aimed at strengthening the healthcare system. She added: “We understand that to achieve health promotion, it’s not only the healthcare sector that is involved. It involves a multisectoral approach. Most of the things that ensure good health are in the social determinants that we have. “Using health promotion as a global tool, we are speaking to stakeholders and policymakers at the level of bringing these organisations to the table at the CME, which are some of the multiple pronged ways we going to arrive at driving health promotion.”
During the plenary, Country Quality Assurance Manager, Dr Jean Njab, noted that as professionals work towards the mission to entrench global standards in healthcare practice, there was a need to incorporate measurements to gauge patient progress and monitor successive outcomes. In a similar development, President Bola Tinubu is said to be worried over the mass exodus of health workers in the country in search of greener pasture, according to his Special Adviser on Public Health Matters, Salma Anas. Anas stated this at the 2023 annual conference of the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists in Abuja, themed: ‘Universal Health Coverage: The Medical Laboratories Priority in Nigeria.’
According to Anas, the President is working towards improving Nigeria’s health sector. She said: “President Bola Tinubu is worried about the ‘japa syndrome’ which we inherited from previous administrations for obvious reasons. Part of our commitment is that we want to reverse that ugly trend and ensure that we sustain and retain our medical experts within the country through several interventions and measures. Part of the efforts is the motivation of our health sector workers within Nigeria, not only through regular payment of salaries and allowances but also in terms of provision of conducive working environment. We will do this through the provision of state-of-the-art medical facilities at all levels especially the primary level of healthcare.” She assured that the government was striving towards producing more health workers in all fields.
