Experts say PHCs Need Adequate Funding, Equipment to function better

Some health practitioners say Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs) require adequate funds, equipment and manpower resources to improve and expand their scope of service delivery.
According to a Medical Imaging Scientist, Dr Livinus Abonyi, , it has become imperative to improve and expand the services rendered by PHCs in order to relieve the secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities. He further described the level and quality of healthcare currently being rendered by PHCs as ‘suboptimal.’
Abonyi, also the Head, Department of Radiography, University of Lagos, said that the PHCs ought to be rendering a wide range of healthcare services, but that were being limited due to shortage of manpower resources.
He decried that the health sector lacked the needed trained community health workers to man the PHCs.
To address the issue of shortage of manpower, Abonyi said that the government need to prioritise the health sector.
To address this issue of lack of manpower, Abonyi said the government had to prioritise health and health issues.
Abonyi, also decried the large population of patients that seek healthcare at secondary and tertiary health facilities, said that the situation has resulted to persistent lack of bed spaces in the health institutions.
According to him, if the PHCs are functioning optimally, greater percentage of health cases would be handled at that level such that only about 30 per cent of the health cases would be referred to the secondary/tertiary health facilities.
Dr Stephen Oluwaniyi, Head, Clinical Services, Federal Neuro-psychiatric Hospital Yaba, also spoke to newsmen and he called for adequate funding of the PHCs to enhance its performance and by extension improve the nation’s health system.
Oluwaniyi, also a consultant psychiatrist, urged the State Governments to intensify efforts to be providing the primary healthcare commission with its quota of the stipulated budget allocation.
He explained that the Federal Government had been trying to pay significant part of its share of the budget allocation, saying that the state governments were yet to make their contributions.
He described PHCs as a vital instrument in health system because they drive disease prevention, which is the most important aspect of healthcare.