People are under-utilising Primary Health Centres - Dr Adeshina

The Special Adviser on Health to Governor Babatunde Fashola, Dr. Yewande Adeshina, has expressed concern over the way people neglect the use of primary health centres.

Adeshina who said this at a briefing on Friday, also urged Lagosians to get referrals from a primary health centre before proceeding to any general hospital in the state.

She said, “It is when PHCs cannot handle a case that they refer the patient to secondary hospital such as the general hospital.

“General hospitals are not built for immunisation and other minor cases.”

According to her, the flagship centres are established by the state government to ensure quality delivery of services in the PHCs.

She also explained that the state government had established and equipped the centres in order to reduce the population of patients who consult with doctors in the general hospitals.

She added, “We had to come up with a revitalisation process for the primary health care system, which led to the development of a template that is now being used as a yardstick in our PHCs.

“The revitalisation programme is essentially to create a 24-hour power supply for health care service within the 57 local governments and council development areas. We will eventually have 57 comprehensive, 24-hour running PHCs. We named them the flagship centres because of the excellence and improvement expected of them.”