The Managing Director, Clina-Lancet Laboratories Nigeria, Olayemi Dawodu, has called for standardisation across the Nigerian healthcare value chain.
Dawodu made the call in a statement on Wednesday after the seventh Continuous Medical Education organised by the firm in Lagos.
Speaking against the backdrop of the theme, “Health Promotion: An Effective Tool for Global Health,” Dawodu said as healthcare transcends boundaries and communities, the onus lies on healthcare practitioners to incorporate best practices in keeping with current global standards.
She added that while quality of health may be impacted by social and economic factors, healthcare practitioners must keep abreast of current innovations within the health sector to remain relevant in meeting the diverse healthcare needs of the public.
Speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the event, she said the event was aimed at strengthening the healthcare system.
She added, “We understand that to achieve health promotion, it’s not only the healthcare sector that is involved. It involves a multisectoral approach. Most of the things that ensure health are in the social determinants that we have.
“Using health promotion as a global tool, we are speaking to stakeholders and policymakers at the level of bringing these organisations to the table at the CME, which are some of the multiple pronged ways we going to arrive at driving health promotion.”
During the plenary, Country Quality Assurance Manager, Dr Jean Njab, noted that as professionals work towards the mission to entrench global standards in healthcare practice, there was a need to incorporate measurements to gauge patient progress and monitor successive outcomes.
He said, “If we have to talk about quality in healthcare, we have to add metrics to healthcare. The only way to make patient safer is to improve quality unrestrained. Quality without metric is wishful thinking.
“That simply means that we should be able to measure what we are managing and then provide leadership in that area. The Six Sigma metric is what enables us to put scale and standard to healthcare. So, once we have the metrics, we can measure. Once we can measure, we can manage. Once we can manage, we can now provide better healthcare.”
The Chairperson, Lagos State Health Service Commission, Mrs Atinuke Onayiga, who represented the Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, noted that the state government was proud to partner with Clina-Lancet Laboratories in redefining the nation’s healthcare landscape.
She noted that as healthcare remains a focal area in building sustainable societies, healthcare professionals needed to build strong institutions and encourage collaboration which would drive the entire sector.
She explained that healthcare practitioners had the power to revolutionise the Nigerian healthcare system.
She said, “Healthcare cannot advance if we do not follow the recent advances and trends in healthcare as regards to people and diagnostics. Together, we will explore how health promotion can be a driving force in achieving global health dignity, breaking down barriers, and making healthcare a universal right.”
