Obitti, an oil-rich community in Ohaji Local Government Area of Imo State, has only one health centre which is now a beehive of activities for snakes, scorpions and termites.
It has no single doctor, no drug, and the place looks abandoned for ages, BusinessDay investigation shows.
Leave Obitti and navigate towards Umuokanne, another community, and you will find a general hospital that is supposed to serve many communities in the LGA. Built by the Ibrahim Babangida military regime in the 1980s, the hospital has been abandoned by successive administrations, and snakes and termites now play host to daring visitors.
Most of the major pieces of equipment in the hospital have been stolen and the remaining items are being pilfered by thieves.
The immediate past government of Governor Rochas Okorocha in the state left that hospital and built another one at Amafor community in the LGA, yet the new hospital is also abandoned without any facilities.
Nigeria is already in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, with over 170 people infected as at Thursday. While the government is doing its best to contain the spread of the virus, including a lockdown of Lagos, Abuja and Ogun State, there are fears that rural dwellers would have no defence if the virus hits villages.
“We are finished in this country if an outbreak occurs in the villages around here,” a 48-year-old nurse in Awara, another community in Ohaji LGA which also has no health centre, told BusinessDay during a visit.
Many communities in Africa’s most populous country have no hospitals at all and those with health centres have no doctors, bed spaces or facilities needed to treat patients.
The absence or terribly poor state of health centres and general hospitals in Nigeria’s rural areas puts the lives of 100 million villagers at risk should coronavirus pandemic spread to communities.
Available statistics show that 49.66 percent of Nigerians live in rural communities. Out of 30,000 health centres in Nigeria, only 10,000 are functional while the rest 20,000 are abandoned, leading to heavy traffic to the specialist hospitals, Isaac Adewole, former minister of health, said in May 2019.
The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) says the country has only 40,000 doctors in an estimated population of 200 million. There are four doctors to 1,000 patients in Nigeria, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
From South-East to South-South, down to North-West and South-West, many communities do not have functional primary health centres and resort to self-medication when sick.
“The problem is that the hospitals, the facilities, the doctors are not there in rural areas,” Una Azih, a medical expert, said.
“Rural communities have many old people and a good number of them have health issues. This also puts them in danger should there be an outbreak,” he said.
Primary Health Centres (PHCs) are established to provide accessible, affordable and available primary health care to people, in line with the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 by WHO member nations. They are supposed to be the first points of contact for most Nigerians. But they are barely available, and when available, one doctor who comes once in a week attends to villagers from three to five communities in a day.
Doyin Odubanjo, chairman, Association of Public Health Physicians of Nigeria, Lagos chapter, said there is a need to make the primary health centres functional so as to enable them to provide some level of services when needed.
Francis Faduyile, NMA president, said the solution to the problem of Nigeria’s health sector lies at the PHCs where the majority of Nigerians live.
“There is a need for the government to hasten its plans for the primary healthcare centres in area of prevention of many of the diseases that will cause more complications at the secondary level. So if we can meet it at the board, at the primary healthcare centre, it will improve it,” he said.
Roughly 95 percent of Nigerians are accessing health care through out-of-pocket payment to meet their health needs. Less than 5 percent of Nigerians are covered by National Health Insurance Scheme, according to a 2014 study by the World Bank.
Most rural communities have no good roads which makes access to doctors difficult. There is slow response to emergencies as doctors live in cities where there are electricity, water, and other basic infrastructure.
Health workers, especially those who will be deployed in rural communities in case of an outbreak, do not have insurance.
Umar Sanda, president, Healthcare Providers Association of Nigeria (HCPAN), believes that mandatory health insurance in Nigeria is the only way forward for health sector in the country.
“When you are on the health insurance scheme, it means you have prepared yourself for any unforeseen health issues, because your health insurance will take care of it when you are sick,” said Sanda recently.
Business Day