Govt to standardise hospital fees

A harmonised and standard hospital fee for public hospitals in Lagos State is soon to be introduced.

This is to ensure no patient is denied access to healthcare in any government health institution particularly at the Primary Health Centres (PHCs).

The Special Adviser to the Governor on Public Health, Dr Yewande Adesina, disclosed this yesterday at a news briefing to announce the March National Immunisation Plus days scheduled to hold between Saturday March 14 and Tuesday March 17.

Adesina’s disclosure was in response to allegation that certain public health facilities were indiscriminately billing patients for consumables which have been provided free for patients.

The special adviser said that government was not oblivious of the goings-on “hence, government through the Ministry of Health is preparing a harmonised and standardised list of items that patients utilising public health facilities like Primary Health Centres would have to pay for and how much is to be paid for the items at any given time so that no one would be short-changed”.

Adesina, while urging mothers and caregivers to take advantage of the scheduled days of immunisation to avail their children of the benefits, urged Lagos residents to henceforth report appropriately any health official who disrespects or demands arbitrary payments to the health authority.

She gave the numbers to report by short message (SMS only), incidents of unruly behaviour at any public hospital in the state to include: 0803315604 (Director of Family Health), 08055281442 (Permanent Secretary, PHC) and 08055329229 (Special Adviser).

The adviser noted that since 2009 Lagos State has not recorded any outbreak of polio neither has it seen any case of wild polio virus “and cannot afford to relent in the effort to continue with the success story because we know the country is just seven months away from being declared polio-free by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

She noted, “Consequently, the expert review committee on Polio Eradication in Nigeria has recommended two rounds of National Immunisation Plus Days (NIPDs) in March and April, targeted at all children under the age of five years. These children will be immunised with two drops of supplemental oral polio vaccine”, said Adesina.

Adesina added that to make the campaign easier for parents and care-givers, trained health officials would be supported by the executive secretaries of each local government area of the state as well as the state mobilisation committee members to go from house to house to ensure every child is immunised against polio.