The need for proper financing of healthcare delivery was at the front burner of the maiden Annual General Meeting of the Lagos State chapter of the  Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN) last week in Lagos.

The senior medical doctors numbering over 120 consultants spread across the Lagos State public health institutions were of the view that paucity of funds has remained the bane of healthcare delivery in the country.

They said  unless enough attention is paid to healthcare financing, Nigerians may experience enormous financial challenges to their health needs, particularly, in the face of global economic recession.

In separate chats with Good Health Weekly during the AGM with the theme “Healthcare Financing”  Chairman of the Association, a concerned medic, Dr. Kolawole Akinlemibola who stressed the importance of finance in healthcare delivery said the theme was to highlight and find ways of matching the healthcare force with the growing population of the State as well as making healthcare services affordable.

Also, Secretary General, MDCAN, an Orthopaedic Surgeon at the General Hospital Lagos, Dr. Lateef  Lawal stressed the urgent need to look into the issues of healthcare financing with a view for possible service improvement, accessibility and affordability.

“We thought we should find ways of improving our services by making it more accessible, more qualitative, affordable to people. To do this, we cannot take away finance, we have chosen the theme so that we can come together and deliberate on the various issues.”

Lawal charged the Health Minister to focus more on revitalising Primary Health Care across the country while stressing the  need for the Minister to look into immunisation activities.

“We should not expect miracles from the Minister. He has less than a year to perform, but I guess the policy thrust should be to reorganise the Primary Health care, so that irrespective of where you are you can have access.