W/Bank study blames poor health services on low productivity

The low productivity of workers rather than the availability of personnel or geographical structures are the factors responsible for poor service delivery in Nigeria’s health and education sectors, a research report has revealed.  The study, which was conducted by the World Bank in partnership with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) and the African Development […]

The low productivity of workers rather than the availability of personnel or geographical structures are the factors responsible for poor service delivery in Nigeria’s health and education sectors, a research report has revealed.
 The study, which was conducted by the World Bank in partnership with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) and the African Development Bank Group (ADB), suggested improved services to address the identified issues.
 The Federal Ministry of Health assisted the World Bank to conduct the health sector survey which focused on primary health care, secondary facilities, health care providers and end users of health care.
  The survey was conducted between June 2013 and January 2014 in 12 states with a random selection of two states for each of the six geo-political zones.
 It revealed that only 19.8 per cent of the sample area professionals had the ability to manage maternal and newborn complication and for availability of drugs, health posts had 46.9 per cent, 47.3 per cent for health centres and 63 per cent in the hospitals, while hospitals scored only 1.8 per cent of vaccines.
The education survey was conducted in four states – Anambra, Ekiti, Niger and Bauchi – with data collected in June 2013. The result revealed that school absence rate was 13.7 per cent in the entire sample area  while for teacher competence, only 36.8 per cent of the surveyed teachers were found competent in Mathematics and another 46.3 per cent in English Language.
 Commenting on the report, Dr Opeyemi Fadeyibi, Service Delivery Indicators Field Coordinator at the World Bank, said low productivity of workers may be attributed to several causes including low levels of technical knowledge required to deliver services, low levels of provider effort, lack of motivation to work and absence of necessary input to deliver services.
 He stated this while speaking during a workshop organised by AERC and the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER), for media and civil society organisations on Service Delivery Indicators (SDI) in Abuja.
 Mr Obadia Miroro, Assistant Knowledge Manager at AERC, said that about 51 per cent of health facilities had met the minimum medical equipment requirements, while health facilities, on average, had 49 percent of all essential drugs available at time of the survey.