The Federal Government and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have called for appropriate technology to address health challenges in the country.
Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole and the Country Representatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mairo Mandara, agreed that the future of healthcare in the country would be in e-health.
They said it would help to reduce the burden of patients seeking care and hasten medical attention.
The duo, who spoke at the Future Health Conference in Abuja, noted that the technology to be deployed must be user-friendly and simplified.
Mandara urged technology providers to come up with tools that would be easy for all to adapt.
She said: “How to do we ensure that we have people-centred technology? Such technology, for me, is not just about the primary healthcare nurse, the midwives and the scan. For me, it is that the person who you are serving understands. Do the women understand what you are doing? Empower the people themselves so that they are no longer dependent. To what extent do they understand your language?”
She also urged the service and technology providers to use the language of the people they serve, saying: “The biggest lesson is humility. Education gives us a lot of arrogance.”
Mandara added: “In situation of health, in situation of life and death, in situation where we have the singular honour of having the ability to develop a tool to serve the people, I think we do need to learn the humility of listening to the people we serve and actually address the things they need.
“In Gates Foundation, we believe all lives have equal values. I know that health is not about diseases, and health is not static. Health is about complete, physical mental and social wellbeing. It is about the eco-system of this variable that no one stays in one place. So, it is creating the balance in this eco-system.
“If technology is going to serve health – because I believe that every tool is suppose to serve humanity and not the other way round – so, we need to look at technology within the context of what is health. Therefore, we look at prevention, curative, maintenance, wellbeing, psycho-social balance and inner peace. All of these encompass health. Therefore, I will want to challenge you to look at health beyond diseases.
“If technology is to serve health in Nigeria, where is the burden of health in this country? Where is the largest proportion of our people? What percentage of our people live below $1.5 a day? Where does 80 per cent of our population lie in the pyramid of the wealth and equity of social justice?
“I am saying this because the status of health in Nigeria has been static for a long time. If you look at the area of maternal health indicators, the 1960s and early 1970s were better than what they are now. The services functioned better and things were moving better. So, if we are going to look at that, the state we are in Nigeria has to be a tough reality analysis.
“What can we do to leapfrog? We cannot go at the pace we have been going for years. If we do that, I can tell you it is going to be a disaster. So, it has to be leapfrogging; and in leapfrogging for health, we need to look at integrated approach.
“We can have technology that can teach rudimentary but life-saving skills. If we can take care of these little things I have talked about, I am sure we would probably decrease our maternal and child mortality by a quarter…”
“I hope the fiscal, when we look at the economic situation in this country now, this is not the time to experiment, this is a time to get solution and just get on. We probably have only three to five years as country to make or mar, to move or to destroy period.
“Therefore, the role of the ministry of Health and National Primary Healthcare cannot be overemphasised. We need to get technology people to understand the basics of healthcare in lay people’s language.
When a tech person understand the basics of healthcare, they then understand how to deal and then to give us solutions to this.
The last but not the least, we need to look at reaching the last man. As we develop technology, we must ensure that we are able to reach human being.”
Also, a strategic product partnerships manager for facebook, Mr. Emeka Afigbo, has pledged to work with another health organisation to provide solutions that would enable healthcare providers to solve the health challenges in the country.
Prof. Adewole said the ministry recognised technology as a key factor in achieving a healthy future for Nigerians.
Adewole, who was represented by the Director of Special Duties in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Ngozi Anazodo, said: “We in the Health sector recognise that technology is a key factor in a achieving our dreams of a healthily future for all Nigerians. Advancements in information gathering, research, treatments and communication have provided the Health sector with new tools to work with and fresh way to practise curative and preventive medicine.
“…New technology has also improved research. So, experts can make healthcare even more effective. Information technology is also on track to improving the safety and reliability of patient care. By analysing health information that users search for online, search engines, such as Google, will help medical experts to respond to outbreaks, such as flu, more quickly as well as take preventive measures.
“Mindful of the critical role of technology in health and all its benefit derivable therefrom, the Federal Ministry of Health started the process of the development of an health strategy. This health strategy, which defines the e framework for the use, regulation and expansion of technology in health, was approved by the National Council on Health in March 2016.
“A major challenge to all of this in our country is, of course, the issue of intermittent and unreliable electricity nationwide. We have been taking steps to mitigate this by providing health facilities with solar power. But that in itself has challenges of insufficient resource, maintenance, security and quality of the installed equipment.
“The current administration has shown that it considers health an important priority.”
Credit: The Nation