The Structure Of Health Care System In Nigeria

Health Care in Nigeria

Some time ago in this blog, there was a post on the different types of hospitals in Nigeria. This post will categorize them into primary, secondary and tertiary health care based on the qualification of the provider and the facilities.

Health Care

Health care is the provision of health related services by a health care provider in various fields to patients, which includes the pharmacy, medical doctor, nursing etc.

Health care provision is divided into three categories. This is based on the health care providers involved in the provision of the health care and the facilities involved. The disease to be treated by one health care may not be treated in the other. This means that the health care provider and facilities vary for each category.

Primary Health Care (P.H.C)

Whenever I see or hear the word PHC, the matriculation number we used back in the days comes to mind. Since our matriculation number was using PHC as an identifier, we use to think it meant pharmacy. It took us time before we knew the true meaning.

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The providers are to treat general diseases. The qualifications of those health care providers have little or no years of experience in health care provision except for the years spent in this setting. Most are fresh out of school with an undergraduate degree.

The facilities in PHC settings are usually few and not advanced. They are just to diagnose and treat minor conditions. The establishment is small. They do not work around the clock and not available every day.

The service is provided in a general or community setting. There is no particular disease they treat. However, they only treat minor conditions of different diseases. They mainly focus on health promotion, patient counselling etc.

PHC always refers cases beyond their capability to the other forms of health care. It can be straight up to tertiary or in most cases to secondary Health Care (S.H.C).

They are the widest spread but due to industrialisation, they are gradually going into extinction. Their value is still there even until date.

Services rendered are family planning, immunization, health education, sex education, sanitation, antenatal etc. patients do not spend the night.

Government owned primary health care are managed and controlled by the local government, which is called health centres and unit hospitals (clinics). Most private own PHC are called clinics.

Secondary Health Care (S.H.C)

They provide special medical care to patients. They also treat general diseases providing more advance care compared to primary health care. This is because the health care providers are mainly those with advanced academic degrees or a mixture with experience from PHC.

Facilities used here are advanced and expensive. The establishment is bigger and standard employing more staffs than PHC. They can diagnose many ailments and treat them. However, diseases that require very special care are referred to Tertiary Health Care (T.H.C).

Most SHC are managed and controlled by the State government, which include general hospitals and central hospitals. Others include private hospitals.

They operate 24/7 rendering services such as emergency, neonatal care, obstetric acute care, etc. patients can spend nights in the hospitals as they contain rooms and beds for patients.

Tertiary Health Care (T.H.C)

They provide specialized or general service on ailments. They do treat general cases but can provide consultative services to patients. The staffs here are people with both advanced degrees and years of experiences in the service they render.

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The facilities are very sophisticated and expensive. They are the biggest among the three level of health care delivery in terms of the number of staffs, equipment and structure. Some of them provide just one special service such as eye specialist, dentist etc. while some few may cover some more such as national hospitals, teaching hospital and Federal medical centre.

It is the responsibility of the federal government to provide these and managed them. However, the service rendered by most FMC can be regarded as SHC. In addition, most teaching hospitals are owned and managed by private or state government.

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