Lagos Assembly sets up committee to investigate state of primary healthcare facilities

A five-man committee of the Lagos State House of Assembly, has been setup to investigate the poor state of primary healthcare facilities across the state.

Members of the House resumed after the 2023 general election with a ‘Matter of Urgent Public Importance’ on issues relating to scarcity of Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) in some areas of the state.

Some of the lawmakers complained of poor facilities and lack of enough medical personnel in most of the primary healthcare centres.

Speaker of the House, Rt Hon.. Mudashiru Ajayi Obasa, who presided over the plenary, named Deputy Leader of the House, Noheem Adams as chairman of the committee.

Other members include Rotimi Abiru, Hakeem Sokunle, Owolabi Ajani and Jude Idimogu. They are to report to the House in two weeks.

Obasa noted that every ward in Lagos deserves a well-equipped PHC for effective medical attention of residents.

“This is an important issue. Every area deserves medical attention, I go with those who suggested that each ward should have a functional PHC.

“Health facility need be made very close to the people, we have some wards that are bigger than some local governments. To get everything in order, it is proper to have a committee in place, We must also ensure budgetary provisions at the local government level.

“We should call on local government chairmen to ensure that they have centres in each ward. And it should not be about grandiose and size of the structure but provision of healthcare,” he said.

Raising the motion, Hon. Adams said Lagos has 327 functional healthcare centres stressing that these are not enough for the over 22 million people residents in the state.

He added that there was need for more personnel to be employed as well as providing more facilities to make the provision of basic health services seamless and affordable.

Hon. Temitope Adewale (Ifako/Ijaiye 1) suggested the need to know who should be responsible for provision of primary healthcare system, while advocating the need for a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement to ease the likely bottlenecks hindering provision of health services to the public.

Noting that each ward should have a PHC, Adewale lamented that Ifako-Ijaiye with seven wards and five centres has just two that are fully functional.

Contributing, Hon. David Setonji (Badagry 2) described PHCs as the health scheme that ought to be accorded priority since it is closest to the people.

Hon. Suraj Tijani (Ojo 22) told his colleagues that issues relating to non-functioning health centres came to the fore during the electioneering campaigns.

On his part, Leader of the House, Hon. Sanai Agunbiade, urged the House to spend the remaining days of the current tenure on oversight relating to the issue.

In his contribution, Hon. Desmond Elliot (Surulere 1) called for collaboration between the local and state governments with respect to fund provision, urging the local government to make special provision from their Internally Generated Revenue IGR for this purpose.