The Health Sector, of levels Primary, Secondary or Tertiary Care, refers to the various institutions and facilities involved in providing healthcare to the public. Where Primary Care, the first point of contact for most healthcare needs, involves consultation with a General Practitioner in a health centre setting, for regular check-ups and management of chronic conditions.
Whilst Secondary Care, undertaken in a hospital setting, entails consultation with specialists, such as a cardiologist. Then Tertiary Care, also undertaken in a hospital setting, providing advanced specialised treatments for severely complex conditions, such as neurosurgery.
The fact is, Primary Care, perennially underestimated and underfunded, represents our Health Sector foundation. And as the Health Sector foundation, it underpins a critically important role in managing common chronic conditions, with a view to promoting good population health. Where paramount among these chronic conditions is, diabetes and hypertension, our number one cause of mortality and morbidity.
In fact, this burden of diabetes and hypertension isn’t unique to us, since they also represent a global affliction. Thus, recognising them as global afflictions, Governments, whether installed or elected, are making massive investments in Primary Care, aimed at proactively preventing complications of these chronic disease conditions.
Having said that, even though this column champions Primary Care, it shouldn’t be inferred that its position is one of defunding of Tertiary or Secondary Care. In fact, this column would be the first to proffer that, Tertiary and Secondary Care do have essential roles to play in any Health Sector. But despite their essential role, this column would assert their investments, as is evident under this installed government, shouldn’t be at the expense of Primary Care. For the critically important role of Primary Care is apparent the world over, where governments are investing trillions of dollars to prevent the masses from becoming ill in the first place.
However, unlike international best practice, where the policy is one of massive investments and expansion of Primary Care, the clueless PPP on a brainless trajectory of their own, has failed and continue to fail, to deliver substantive investments in our Primary Care. And confronted with such unconventional practice, of not providing substantive investments in the all-important Primary Care, the question of why burdens us.
In fact, the answer to the aforementioned question is self-evident, Primary Care by its very nature doesn’t lend itself to large infrastructure works, unlike Secondary and Tertiary Cares. For the fact is, our Primary Care, synonymous with health centres, are housed in relatively small inexpensive buildings, not affording themselves to large infrastructure kickbacks.
Which means, in the absence of a functional Primary Care, our diabetics, hypertensives and other chronic diseases are left to their own devices, developing serious life-threatening complications like kidney failure, cardiac disease etc. But this installed government careless about the many life-threatening complications, as they promote their policy of propaganda medicine, in the form of headline grabbing complex surgical interventions. In fact, even though these complex surgical interventions, as propagandised by PPP, have a role in a developed Health Sector, in our context where the Health Sector is archaic at best, the priority should be on getting the basics right through preventive medicine of Primary Care.
Thus, it’s for these very reasons, this column would argue, with supporting evidence, for substantive investment and expansion in our Primary Care. In fact, such investment and expansion aren’t only cost effective, but most importantly, they promote better patient outcomes. And these better patient outcomes are underpinned by the surveillance of chronic diseases, in a Primary Care setting, to prevent their otherwise rapid progression to life-threatening complications.
Therefore, from the aforementioned, it’s patently obvious that Primary Care in our context, and the world over, do have the critically important role in keeping the population healthy. However, PPP in their kleptocracy, wouldn’t provide substantive investments in the expansion and development of our Primary Care, since by its very nature, it doesn’t involve massive corruptible infrastructure works.
