MALARIA REMAINS HIGHEST COST OF MORTALITY IN NIGERIA.

Njideka Ozoalor

The Minister of State for health, Sen. Olorunnimbe Mamora, has stated that malaria remains the highest cause mortality and has continued to thrive due to poor state of primary health center in the country.

The Minister said this at a public hearing on five health- related bills organized by the house of Representatives Committee on health institution, on Thursday.

He also said that existing facilities and health institutions in the country were groaning under the problem of inadequate funding, revealing that a recent audit carried out by the ministry of health showed that less than a third of 30,000 primary health centers in the country were not functioning.

He said, ” A number of the existing facilities of health institutions are groaning under the pains of inadequate funding. They are groaning.
Whether Federal medical centers, whether they are teaching hospitals, even at the primary health center in the communities. It would interest you to know that at the last audit the ministry of health carried out, out of about 30,000 primary health centers in the audit report, that we have less than one third that are not fully functioning because the functioning is not determined by the building , the physical structure.

“You need the Services, You need potable water, You need renewable energy. You need a means of transportation, So that whether cases that cannot be handled at the level would be easily moved to higher centers, maybe at the secondary or tertiary levels. These are the basic challenges.

“What we are told on medical schools is that common things occurs commonly and it is why Malaria still remain the highest cause of mortality and morbidity in the country today. Malaria has killed more than HIV/COVID has killed and unfortunately most of the the cases can be managed within the primary care level, If only this primary health centers are functional and able to offer the basic services.

” We feel very strongly from the ministry of Health that this is when we need to focus our attention, we know that the bulk of the people live in the rural areas and their first port of call is the existing facilities in primary health centers that could be easily approach when they have challenges.

“From what we have seen is that rather than go to these centers where things are not functioning well, they now go to general hospital and tertiary centers and they become choked.

Tertiary Centers are supposed to be referrals Centers. It is only the complicated cases that are supposed to be referred to the tertiary centers. We need to get it right”.