Why govt won’t privatise healthcare –Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday, said that government is careful of considering the option of privatization of healthcare institutions in the country as canvassed in some quarters because it would exclude the poor and vulnerable from accessing healthcare.

He stated this in Abuja, while receiving a team, led by Professor Olu Akinkugbe and constituted by the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library to develop an agenda for the health sector in the country.

According to him, there is a need to take a look at the state of development of the country before considering the option, noting that, “Privatization aims at maximum profit. It then excludes the poor and the vulnerable from accessing healthcare. But we have to look after the poor,” President Buhari said.

He also assured pharmaceutical companies in the country of government support to enable them produce essential drugs locally, instead of relying on wholesale importation.

He recalled that the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), which he headed in the 1990s, had developed what it called “institutional strengthening,” in which PTF supported pharmaceutical companies with resources to encourage local production of drugs.

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“We can revisit the experience. We can strengthen pharmaceutical companies to produce essential drugs needed in the country locally. We can then be sure of the quality of such medications” the President said.

The Olu Akinkugbe-led team had earlier given insights into its agenda for the health sector to include proposals on healthcare financing, developing health intelligence/observatory to preempt epidemics, simultaneous focus on primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare, preventing labour unrests in the health sector, facilitating access to essential drugs through local production and the drug distribution system among others.

Prof Akinkugbe said that the current buffeting economic storms were global, and not peculiar to Nigeria, expressing his belief that we will surely overcome.

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