Lagos State Commissioner for Health Dr Jide Idris, yesterday called for a review and re-organisation of the health sector in order to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Idris made the call at a Lagos State Media and Communication Healthcare Financing Training organised for journalists by the by the State Ministry of Health in Lagos.
The training was in collaboration with the United States Agency International Development (USAID) funded project, Health Finance and Governance (HFG), a non-governmental organization (NGO).
Idris said: โUniversal health coverage involves reviewing and restructuring the systems to address specific things; if we get this right, it is a total paradigm shift and the state will be better for it.
โWe need more money to address so many things that we need to do in the health sector, not only building hospitals. There are so many things we need to do in the health sector that people do not see, which are very crucial to the success and health of our people, all these need funding. We need human resource; we need to educate and enlighten the people.
โWe need to control diseases, we need to trace data and trace diseases occurrences.โ
He said there was need for people to know what the state government was doing to make healthcare more accessible, affordable and efficient.
The commissioner advised residents to contribute to the Lagos State Health Scheme (LSHS) so that they could be covered, adding that funding the health sector was huge task.
According to him, the scheme, which will commence in two monthsโ time, will involve both public and private providers in the provision of services.
โWe are starting with the basic care so that over 70 per cent of our people will have access to see the doctor and be treated at the primary care level. We are trying to introduce a referral system whereby you refer people from the primary to the secondary and tertiary institutions. We are trying to put order into the system and we are trying to introduce quality,โ he said.
