Nigeria’s Healthcare Delivery System for Human Development: Need to Reduce Malaria Burden for Increase Productivity in the Economy

Abstract

In discussing human development, two indices are usually taken into consideration – health and education. Health and education are part of the social sectors of human development that in turn drives the economic and political sectors. But it appears these social sectors have not been given the priority they deserve in governance for decades now. This is seen by the shoddy manner Nigerian government is handling preventable and curable diseases such as malaria which continues to expose its ineffective leadership and institutional rot. One of these debilitating diseases is malaria fever. Malaria disease is alarming and is causing high incidences of death especially among children and pregnant women. The paper expresses that health sector of the economy is not healthy and by extension majority of Nigerians are not healthy and therefore are unable to contribute positively to the economy. Besides, Nigeria needs to imitate countries such as Algeria, Argentina, Maldives, Sri Lanka that have been certified malaria-free by developing novel malaria fighting tools through innovations to end the cycle of the disease. Nigeria needs to set aside the World Health organisation (WHO) recommended annual budgets to health. The health policies need to be pursued positively and implemented through the use of competent personnel; the bad eggs or corrupt ones should be shown the way out. Health personnel need to be motivated through financial incentives, training and retraining for high productivity. The paper uses secondary source materials for data and multidisciplinary and analytical approaches as its methodology.