Outskirts Press, INC.

Primary Healthcare in Nigeria: Overview, Challenges, and Prospects is a well-intended effort to explore the current health system in Nigeria in the context of the 21st Century. It provides a historical background to the Nigerian healthcare system, identifies the major challenges, and provides rich information on how to improve the health care system in Nigeria. It brings into focus Nigeria’s struggle to improve primary healthcare delivery and how those efforts have not improved the peoples’ health in Nigeria. It also explains how the lack of effective primary healthcare delivery system promotes medical tourism and causes loss of national revenue to foreign health care systems. This book clearly identifies basic challenges affecting healthcare delivery such as poor infrastructure, underfunding, lack of research and community involvement, inadequate labor force management and development, lack of true leadership and accountability in public office, poor health promotion and education strategies, and a fragile public-private sector partnership in healthcare delivery. Primary Healthcare in Nigeria draws examples from other countries which have improved their health systems to show that the solutions to Nigeria’s healthcare problems rest in the hands of leadership committed to the nation’s good and wellness. Primary Healthcare in Nigeria: Overview, Challenges, and Prospects is intended to give public health students a clearer perspective about Nigeria’s health system and how it impacts peoples’ lifespan, wellness, and national development. It is also a good resource for public health professionals to understand and embrace the global view of public health, and then challenges them to work toward a better healthcare delivery system. This book is organized in chapters and focuses essentially on: The historical origin of Nigeria’s healthcare system Meaning of a healthcare system The Concept of Access to Health care Challenges and prospects of the primary healthcare system Importance of community involvement in healthcare delivery Examples of countries with improved healthcare system Nigerian health labor force and the strategies for improvement Recognizing and utilizing traditional medicine in the healthcare system Transportation safety and the need for an emergency medical response system Medical tourism Appendix of signs of a decayed health system It is strongly recommended that reading this book will give readers an insight into the Nigerian healthcare system and the motivation to advocate for a change to a system of care which will recognize and provide healthcare as a fundamental human right of Nigerian citizens and residents. —Raymond O. Chimezie, Ph.D., FRSPH