The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) recently launched a five-year strategic plan to improve this country’s health sector. The plan, launched on Tuesday April 18, 2007 brought together civil society organizations and other medical associations to parley and advance the sector. Among those at the meeting to finalize the NMA Strategic Plan 2017-2022 were development partners. 

NMA president Dr Mike Ogirima said, “We will walk the talk to reach even the hardest-to-reach areas with the key interventions of public health education, personal and environmental hygiene, medically supervised [antenatal] services, routine as well as other immunization campaigns and other infant/child survival programmes.” Also commenting, Dr Kingsley Enweremadu, vice president of NMA said, “The health sector for now is in shambles and every effort is being made through CSOs and our partners to make sure the health sector is what it is supposed to be.”

The plan is said to be fashioned after the National Strategic Health Development Plan developed by the Federal Ministry of Health in 2009, which has ended its term and is up for review. It includes medical education, clinical governance and research, among other areas of focus.  “You see alignment, combining of its members with contributing to the health sector and meeting health sector broad goals,” said Dr Nkata Chuku, founding partner of Health Systems Consult, who worked on a team that developed both the National Health Act and the NMA Plan.

We commend NMA for this initiative. Any effort that would improve the healthcare sector of this country should be appreciated by all concerned. There are many embarrassing and depressing statistics associated with this sector.  For example, a 2013 published data by United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) stated that Nigeria accounts for 14% of worldwide maternal mortality.  Every ten minutes in Nigeria, we lose a woman due to pregnancy related complications.

Maternal mortality in Nigeria also accounts for 32 percent of all deaths among women of child-bearing age (15-49), according to Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) 2013. NDHS is published by National Population Commission with inputs from other agencies and international partners. What this means is that if 100 women died last month, 32 of them died due to child-bearing related illnesses. Yet, while NMA’s strategic plan is commendable, Nigeria is rather laden with such plans and visions which are either completely ignored or poorly implemented.  The fact that this five-year strategic plan is also based on another plan proves the point.

For instance, thirteen years ago in 2004, Nigeria released a policy called National Policy for Sustainable Development with the objective of improving “the quality of life and standard of living of the Nigerian population.” Specifically, it wanted to reduce the infant mortality rate to 35 per 1,000 live births by 2015; reduce the child mortality rate to 45 per 1,000 live births by 2010 and reduce maternal mortality ratio to 125 per 100,000 live births by 2010 and to 75 by 2015. Unfortunately, we have to lower our heads in shame because if NDHS 2013 is an indication, we’re nowhere near achieving these targets. For example, we wanted to reduce “the maternal mortality ratio to 125 per 100,000 live births by 2010” but it was 576 in 2013!  

This means, instead of reducing maternal mortality through the policy, we increased it more than four times.  So, we don’t think the country needs more strategic plans but more of effective implementation.  We would however take consolation in the promise of NMA that they would walk the talk.  If that is accomplished, they would have set a record for achieving what government has been unable to accomplish for decades.

POSTED BY:OPUOMONI PRIYE

DATE:05/06/2017