Nigeria - The West African Health Sector Unions Network (WAHSUN) has called for adoption and passage into law of healthcare rights in the National and State Houses of Assembly in Nigeria.

WAHSUN, at a validation meeting and advocacy planning session on ‘Healthcare is a human right campaign’ in Abuja, stated that this is at the core of its campaign across West African region.

The meeting, which was organised by Solidarity Centre AFL-CIO, noted that findings have revealed the poor state of healthcare facilities and services in Nigeria and in West African countries. It therefore said that making healthcare a human right is the elixir to ensuring efficient and effective healthcare facilities and services.

Participants at the meeting called on workers, both in the formal and informal sector in Nigeria, to rise up and join the campaign and advocacy for the demand of a healthcare rights legislation.

While they enumerated many benefits healthcare rights’ law would engender into the economic growth of the country, they particularly said the passage of the law and its implementation would tremendously cushion the unbearable sufferings of the citizens owing to health issues.

The unions went on to decry the high rate of continued travel to foreign countries to seek medical care by leaders while the poor are left to die in the horrible medical facilities in the country.

The unions also said their research findings revealed that Nigerians spend $1 billion annually on medical tourism, adding that doctors are going out of the country for the United Kingdom, United States of America and Canada due to poor healthcare facilities.

The Country Programme Director of West Africa Solidarity Center, AFL-CIO, Sonny Ogbuehi, who disclosed this said, “The research serves as a basis for advocacy to pressure government on the need to invest more on healthcare. Medical tourism is a huge issue. As everyone knows, when COVID-19 happened, the borders were close and a lot of government officers were forced to seek medical treatment in Nigeria.

“COVId-19 pandemic served as an eye opener to every country especially Nigeria, on how we need to equip our healthcare and invest more on healthcare and spend less on medical tourism. According to the report, Nigeria spends 1 billion yearly and about $11 billion within the last 10 years. That’s a lot of money.”

Ogbuehi further noted that “The major challenge of healthcare service provision in Nigeria and other parts of Africa is lack of investment in healthcare. Government personnel seem to prefer going on medical tourism in other countries.

“Nigeria is currently at the top of countries that spend so much on medical tourism. Since after COVID-19 lockdowns, many African countries are investing heavily on their healthcare facilities. Nigeria unfortunately has not taken up the challenge as other African countries do. So this campaign is targeted at creating awareness for the government to wake up and take healthcare provision seriously.”

He also praised trade unions for taking the lead in calling and creating awareness for healthcare provision and for the ultimate legislation of healthcare rights.

Earlier in his remarks, the Executive Secretary of the Organisation of Trade Unions of West Africa (OTUWA), John Odah, called on governments to ensuring that 15 per cent of their annual budgets are devoted to upgrading healthcare facilities to meet the minimum requirements set up by the Africa Union.

Odah said, “The medical tourism is caused by neglect of medical facilities by various governments, both the federal and state government, and other members of the ruling elite that engage in this cause tremendous hemorrhage to our foreign exchange.

“It is a case of being pennywise pound foolish, if the respective governments have invested in upgrading the infrastructure of medical facilities, a lot of these medical tourism that happen wouldn’t have happened.”

In her presentation, Programme Officer of OTUWA, Precious Mbat, said, “Nigeria has the largest population of informal workers in the African region and one of the largest in the world. Over 80 per cent of the active working populations in Nigeria work in the informal economy.”

She noted that government need to invest in the provision of more healthcare facilities, drugs and recruitment of medical personnel in poor communities and health insurance schemes should be more inclusive as informal sector workers find it difficult to access healthcare in private hospitals for lack of affordability while government mediated community healthcare schemes are also poorly implemented.

Also, a member of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwife (NANNM), Faith Akabogu, said that if the welfare of health workers in the country is not taken into consideration, Nigerians doctors will keep leaving the country.

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