Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq received praise from Faculty members of Public Health and Community Medicine for his administration’s dedication to the sector. They commended his investments in infrastructure, payment of counterpart funds, and improved welfare for health sector workers in the state. During the 2023 Faculty Day lecture at the Nigeria Postgraduate Medical College in Ilorin, the Faculty Chairman, Dr Chikaike Ogbonna, acknowledged the Governor’s prompt attention to health issues and the recent approval of 100% CONMESS and skipping allowance for medical doctors and consultants. The Governor was commended for his attendance at the lecture and urged to continue his commitment to healthcare delivery.
In his response, the Governor applauded the Faculty and health specialists for their efforts in saving lives and emphasized the need for stakeholders to strengthen mechanisms to address public health issues worldwide. He also highlighted the successful management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kwara State and Africa’s overall performance in handling the crisis.
“The theme of today’s lecture brings to live the memory of the joint effort that was committed to rid our communities of COVID-19. What we achieved, both as a nation and specifically here, was an outstanding enabler, which gave us a practical opportunity to evaluate the health system we inherited.”
AbdulRazaq urged medical doctors to work harmoniously with all other members of the health team for better results.
“In response to our observations and findings, our administration concentrated on addressing the infrastructural gaps in my first tenure during which we were able to fix well over 57 health care facilities, ensured payment of counterpart and commitment funds to enlist the state and initiate operationalisation of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, run the ANRiN project smoothly. We also made multi-pronged Malaria elimination interventions accessible to all Kwarans amongst others,” he said.
“Without resting on our oars, about 2 weeks ago, I approved the upgrade of the CONMESS salary to 100% for doctors and also approved several allowances to enhance the CONHESS salary for nurses and pharmacists in the state and the local Government.
“We are hopeful that addressing attrition challenges in human resources, in this way, will tremendously reverse the JAPA trend and enable us to retain more good hands and make our state attractive for more specialists to join us in providing quality health care to our people.
“In consonance with the extant definition of health, according to WHO, and the SDGs, we are equally touching the lives of all Kwarans positively in the socio-economic space, education, agriculture, and rural development, amongst others with a view to maintaining an overall well-being.”
Speaking on the theme of the lecture, a Professor of Public Health, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Adedeji Onayade, identified limited resources, strained facilities, communication barriers, the rapid spread of false or misinformation, rumour, and myth mongering through the social media as some of the hurdles for executing effective response in disease outbreaks.
“Amidst these excitements and frustrations, valuable lessons are learned. Each outbreak response provided an opportunity for reflection, improvement, and building resilience for future challenges, for example, based on the experience with Ebola, active members of the COVID-19 committee were volunteers who committed to the response,” he added.
“My excitements lie in opportunities for innovation, collaboration, and the lives saved. Leading the teams, responding to affected persons, motivating workers, and applying my knowledge, expertise, little understanding of the Yoruba culture and proverbs, to devise strategies for outbreak containment and disarm distractors have been rewarding.”
Prof Onayade also described disease outbreak as a security issue and called on policymakers to maximize the large pool of expertise available in the departments of community health/Medicine within the tertiary institutions during outbreak of diseases.
