The Nigerian health care system: Need for integrating adequate medical intelligence and surveillance systems. ~ HEALTH

As an important element of national security, public health not only functions to provide adequate and timely medical care but also track, monitor, and control disease outbreak. The Nigerian health care had suffered several infectious disease outbreaks year after year. Hence, there is need to tackle the problem. This study aims to review the state of the Nigerian health care system and to provide possible recommendations to the worsening state of health care in the country. To give up-to-date recommendations for the Nigerian health care system, this study also aims at reviewing the dynamics of health care in the United States, Britain, and Europe with regards to methods of medical intelligence/surveillance.

Materials and Methods:

Databases were searched for relevant literatures using the following keywords: Nigerian health care, Nigerian health care system, and Nigerian primary health care system. Additional keywords used in the search were as follows: United States (OR Europe) health care dynamics, Medical Intelligence, Medical Intelligence systems, Public health surveillance systems, Nigerian medical intelligence, Nigerian surveillance systems, and Nigerian health information system. Literatures were searched in scientific databases Pubmed and African Journals OnLine. Internet searches were based on Google and Search Nigeria.

Results:

Medical intelligence and surveillance represent a very useful component in the health care system and control diseases outbreak, bioattack, etc. There is increasing role of automated-based medical intelligence and surveillance systems, in addition to the traditional manual pattern of document retrieval in advanced medical setting such as those in western and European countries.

Conclusion:

The Nigerian health care system is poorly developed. No adequate and functional surveillance systems are developed. To achieve success in health care in this modern era, a system well grounded in routine surveillance and medical intelligence as the backbone of the health sector is necessary, besides adequate management couple with strong leadership principles.

KEY WORDS: Health care, medical intelligence, medical surveillance systems, Nigeria, Nigerian health care system, public health

The Nigerian health care has suffered several down-falls.

Despite Nigerian's strategic position in Africa, the country is greatly underserved in the health care sphere. Health facilities (health centers, personnel, and medical equipments) are inadequate in this country, especially in rural areas.While various reforms have been put forward by the Nigerian government to address the wide ranging issues in the health care system, they are yet to be implemented at the state and local government area levels. According to the 2009 communiquι of the Nigerian national health conference, health care system remains weak as evidenced by lack of coordination, fragmentation of services, dearth of resources, including drug and supplies, inadequate and decaying infrastructure, inequity in resource distribution, and access to care and very deplorable quality of care. The communiquι further outlined the lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities among the different levels of government to have compounded the situation.

Unarguably, problems in the health care system of any country abound to a certain extent.Although health has the potential to attract considerable political attention, the amount of attention it actually receives varies from place to place. In their commentary of the 3T's road map to transform US health care, Denise Dougherty and Patrick H. Conway rightly stated a step by step transformation of the US health care system from 1T →2T →3T which is required to create and sustain an information-rich and patient-focused health care system that reliably delivers high-quality care

Provision of timely information aimed at combating possible health menace among many other things is an important function of public health. Hence, inadequate tracking techniques in the public health sector can lead to huge health insecurity, and hence endanger national security, etc.

For decades ago, communicable diseases outbreak was a threat not only to lives of individuals but also national security. Today it is possible to track outbreaks of diseases and step up medical treatment and preventive measures even before it spreads over a large populace. Medical and epidemiological surveillance, besides adequate health care delivery, are essential functions of public health agencies whose mandate is to protect the public from major health threats, including communicable diseases outbreak, disaster outbreak, and bioterrorism.To avoid the various threats and communication lapses to strengthen the health work force planning, management, and training which can have a positive effect on the health sector performance, one requires timely and accurate medical information from a wide range of sources.

The Nigerian health care had suffered several infectious disease outbreaks and mass chemical poisoning for several years. Hence, there is immense need to tackle the problem.

This study aims to review the state of the Nigerian health care system and to provide possible recommendations/solutions to the worsening state of health care in the country. To give up-to-date recommendations for the Nigerian health care system, the dynamics of health care in the United States and Europe with regards to methods of medical intelligence and surveillance (MIS) are also reviewed. In this article, MIS systems are suggested to be integrated into Nigerian health care system to serve the needs the health care system of the modern era.

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