Health workers and volunteer tasks

All over the world, provision of effective health care services depend not only on physical infrastructure and equipments but more importantly on the availability of skilled manpower. The World Health Organization (WHO), in its report of 2006 (working together for health), focused on human resources in the health sector. This is because of the crisis […]

All over the world, provision of effective health care services depend not only on physical infrastructure and equipments but more importantly on the availability of skilled manpower. The World Health Organization (WHO), in its report of 2006 (working together for health), focused on human resources in the health sector. This is because of the crisis in the global health workforce.

The report revealed an estimated shortage of almost 4.3 million doctors, midwives, nurses and support staff worldwide. The shortage is most severe in the poorest countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, where skilled manpower is required to address the myriad health problems. Nigeria, the most populous African country is not immune to such shortages. This is compounded by the exodus of health work force to developed countries.  The WHO recommends 1:2,000 doctor patient ratio but this is far beyond the reach of most countries in this part of the world due to multiple problems such as inadequate health man power, brain drain etc. The situation is more critical in northern Nigeria especially in rural areas.

In Kano State with population of over 9 million people and 216 registered doctors in public services of the state as at August 2009, there is obviously a serious gap in the human resources for health care. The most affected people are the disadvantaged groups (women and children) either in remote rural areas or urban poor who may not afford to go to private hospitals or fee paying tertiary institutions. The fact that over 60% of Nigerians live in rural areas means that there is need to reduce the gap between the health status of people, especially between urban and rural population. As it is known by many, children under the age of 5years and pregnant women die in large numbers from preventable diseases and diseases that can be easily cured if diagnosed and treated early.

This is despite the fact that there are many indigenous doctors from the 44 LGAs of the state, the same local governments that are in dire need of health personnel. In one of the tertiary institutions in the state; Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, there are about 83 Consultants, over 200 resident doctors and many nurses, pharmacists, laboratory scientists, physiotherapist etc majority of whom are from the states within that constitute  catchment area of the hospital.

However, although these indigenous doctors are mostly very busy in their respective places during working days, the weekends are usually less busy, thus can be judiciously utilised in providing voluntary medical services in their respective home towns, in the form of volunteerism in either primary or secondary health facilities located in their LGAs of origin. This will also be in line with current effort by the federal government to invite Nigerians in Diaspora especially medical doctors to provide voluntary medical services, in their various areas, as its belief that it will greatly improve the poor health indices in the country. In addition to that, the number of patients with minor ailments going to congest the General Out Patients Departments of tertiary institutions will be greatly reduces. This will allow the tertiary institutions like Teaching Hospitals and Federal Medical Centers to focus on their statuary responsibility of training, research and provision of specialised medical care.

If one imagines a situation where at least one medical doctor who hails from a particular local government area would volunteer one weekend in a month to go back to his people and provide free medical consultations, supportive supervision to other health workers and enlighten the patients he/she sees about their disease condition, give basic information on nutrition, personal and environmental sanitation etc, the level of morbidity and mortality and death that can be averted cannot be quantified. In a situation where some local government areas have an average of 5-10 indigenous doctors, if each of them is willing to sacrifice a weekend in a month, this gesture supported by other health personnel such as Nurses/Midwives, Pharmacist, Laboratory Scientist etc. will lead to the closure of the yearning gap in health care delivery.

The presence of indigenous health personnel would not only encourage people to avail themselves of the opportunity, but will sensitise and gather support for village and ward development committees where they exist or help in establishing or strengthening these committees where they are  not in existence or non functional. The volunteer health workers can also advocate to government officials, (both at the state and local government levels), community leaders and philanthropists individuals and organizations in their area to assist in the health care delivery through purchase of necessary equipments etc. This would obviously make a difference as majority of these political and community leaders would be motivated or even feel challenged to support the services been provided.

This would translate into availability of free and quality health services to majority of people regardless of their socio-economic status or distance from   health facilities, and subsequently the poor health indices, such as maternal mortality and infant mortality especially in Northern part of this country would be greatly improved.

I would therefore like to strongly encourage my fellow colleagues and all other health workers to sacrifice their time and energy no matter how little to offer these services. The ultimate goal would then be an improved overall health status and socio-economic development of our people

Dr Mohammed Musa Bello writes from Dept. of Community Medicine, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano E-mail: [email protected]