Some healthcare practitioners have blamed the ineffectiveness of primary healthcare centres for patients crowding secondary and tertiary health institutions to seek healthcare services.

The experts made the assertion in an interview on Sunday in Lagos.

According to them, the situation is the major cause of the persistent lack of bed spaces in secondary/tertiary health facilities across the country.

Livinus Abonyi, dean of the Faculty of Healthcare Services at the Federal University of Allied Health Sciences, Enugu, underscored the need to strengthen the PHCs in the country for optimal performance.

Mr Abonyi, also an associate professor of Medical Radiography/Medical Imaging, lamented that the PHCs were poorly funded, particularly in terms of manpower, facilities, and equipment.

He said that PHCs need not only to be equipped with adequate manpower and resources, but also to be empowered to function 24 hours in order to accommodate health emergencies that usually occur at night.

Abonyi, who decried the large number of patients seeking healthcare at secondary and tertiary health facilities, said that the situation has resulted in a persistent lack of bed spaces in the health institutions.

According to him, if the PHCs are functioning optimally, a 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 tertiary health facilities.

A teacher, Donatus George, lamented how his wife passed out in the process of being transferred from one public hospital to another due to a lack of bed space and a limited number of health  personnel on the ground.

According to him, the circumstances that surrounded the death of his wife are an unforgettable experience, calling for intensified efforts to strengthen the emergency response system of the nation’s healthcare system to avert avoidable deaths.

A physician, Gerald Chinasa, frowned at the general Nigerian mentality and belief that the best healthcare services could only be obtained at the tertiary health institutions. Mr Chinasa, who stated that quality healthcare services were possible even at the PHCs, explained that equipping the PHCs with adequate manpower, resources, and equipment was crucial to achieving this goal.

The chief medical director of Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Wasiu Adeyemo, decried the high patient population and workload at the hospital, explaining that not all health conditions are meant to be handled at tertiary health institutions.

Mr Adeyemo, who called for the establishment of more public hospitals across the states of the federation, said that the few existing ones were insufficient to cater to the country’s teeming population.

He decried that most secondary healthcare facilities and PHCs were not living up to the expectations, as they often push health conditions that were ordinarily supposed to be handled at their levels to the tertiary healthcare institutions.

(NAN)