AKOR SYLVESTER, Abuja
The Federal government has urged medical practitioners across the country to uphold professional standards of practice, competence, conduct and ethics in order to safeguard the public and ensure that they get the best care at any point in time.
The minister of state for health and social welfare, Iziaq Adekunle Salako, who gave the charge at the Opening Ceremony of the Workshop of the Association of Medical Council of Nigeria in Abuja Tuesday, also tasked the medical regulatory bodies to ensure that only qualified health practitioners are allowed to practice in the country.
Salako said under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, health is at the centre of the national development and national security.
According to him: “In demonstration of this, the Health Sector is enjoying better funding and priority attention. A typical example of this priority attention is the return of health regulatory bodies in the country to budgetary funding by the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu thus reversing the policy of the previous government for regulatory bodies to become self-funding”.
Continuing, the Minister said, “our blueprint to save lives, reduce physical and financial pains and produce health for all Nigerians is therefore being diligently implemented.
“We are strengthening governance, including regulatory oversight, expanding access to primary healthcare services, improving and expanding secondary and tertiary healthcare infrastructure, deploying digitization, investing in our workforce and prioritizing health security.
Under the Renewal Hope Agenda of the President, the health of all Nigerians is a matter of right and urgency”.
He commended the Association of Medical Councils of Africa for its unwavering dedication to advancing healthcare regulation, while challenging participants to engage boldly, think creatively, and act decisively.
Salako maintained that: “The resilience of the health systems and the well-being of millions of Africans depends on the decisions we make here and elsewhere on a regular basis.The challenges we face are shared, and so must be our solutions. This workshop is a platform to forge partnerships, exchange knowledge, and align our efforts toward a healthier Africa”.
Appreciating the Association of Medical Council of Africa for choosing Nigeria as country for the workshop, the Minister said: “Africa currently stands at a crossroads with our health systems facing unprecedented challenges of pandemics, increasing burden of non communicable diseases, infrastructure deficit, high out of pocket expenses for health, climate change, economic pressures, and the persistent migration of our health workforce.
Yet, within these challenges lie opportunities to innovate, collaborate, build resilience and positively redirect the trajectory of the health status of our peoples.
“This workshop therefore speaks to our collective resolve and the pressing issues we must address to strengthen healthcare regulation and leadership as the bedrock of sustainable health systems”.
The minister further categorised the issues as: Health Workforce Migration, Improving Credentialing Systems, Management of Practitioners’ Malpractice, and Enhancing Information and Data Management Systems.
He called on Africa to work together to institute legally binding agreements that will ensure that destination countries contribute better to the health infrastructural and manpower development of Africa countries that continue to expend huge national resources to train health workers that are keeping the health systems of America, Europe and Asia running.
According to the Minister, health workforce migration should become health workforce exporting.
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