President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday March 22, alleged that the unfriendly attitude of health workers in the country to patients is one of the reasons Nigerians seek medical treatment abroad.
Speaking through the Minister of Health Osagie Ehanire at the official commissioning of an International Conference Centre and Telemedicine hall as well as six other projects at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Abeokuta, the President stressed the need for continuous training and retraining of health workers in order to deliver quality health care services to Nigerians.
Buhari said “We still get all too often for comfort, disconcerting reports of not friendly attitudes of staff to patients, reports of unhygienic and housekeeping standards that leaves something to be desired even in the presence of sophisticated equipment and well-qualified doctors. Such simple failings like these are more frequently responsible for the loss of confidence of the end-users in our health system than even the lack of equipment. They are the triggers for the distrust that will lead people to go on medical tourism. We have a lot of work to do in that area. I want to believe that the managers of our hospitals, after such laudable, fantastic infrastructure investment, will now begin to pay attention, not only to improving staff harmony and welfare but to retraining health caregivers for better professionalism that deliver service in a productive and courteous atmosphere based on the lessons we learnt from our traditional African hospitality. We are carrying on infrastructural development at all our tertiary hospitals to position them for quality health care delivery to all persons, the National Health Insurance Scheme is awaiting a new law to make health insurance mandatory”