Given emerging challenges in healthcare systems across the world, stakeholders, including public health practitioners in Nigeria must begin to evolve with the changing times, adapt, reinvent themselves.
They must also extend their reach and expand their circle of influence to seemingly unseen opportunities by exploring the power of collaboration and partnerships.
Those were the views of Dr Akinwumi Fajola, a Public Health physician, specialist and business leader, in his keynote address at the ongoing 39th Annual General Meeting and Scientific Conference of the Association of Public Health Physicians of Nigeria, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Speaking on the theme “Public Health Practice: New Opportunities and New Challenges”, Dr Fajola said “we must look at our countries public health emerging challenges as an opportunity to evolve our practice, to change and set ourselves and our health care system on a steady part to progress.”
“Time and Time again our species have escaped existenal threats by reinventing ourselves, finding new ways of resolving issues,” he added.
According to him, “we need to continue to knock on the door of the policy makers due to the many public health issues we are dealing with.
“The need to begin to retune our training as public health physicians to fit our evolving environment and what is needed in the marketplace is also essential.”
He decried the present landscape of public health practice in Nigeria, noting that “it has become increasingly complex – crowded with multiple partners and actors implementing programmes, sometimes overlapping, and sometimes fragmented.
“We also have academic institutions, government agencies and corporate bodies working in silos to deliver a common goal.”
Continuing, the Shell Nigeria Community Health Manager said, “the journey to a refreshing start. This includes looking back, drilling down to understand the issues, re-calibrating, innovating, possibly rebranding, and maybe disrupting from within, in order to deliver a fit-for-purpose healthcare system.”
Dr Fajola noted that the current challenges presents a unique opportunity to provide “transformative and evidence-based solutions to sustain emerging challenges through partnerships, academic prowess, and the provision of policy direction. It is also an opportunity to make things right and do the right things.”