Stakeholders from the fields of health and urban planning, including policymakers and the media, have raised their voices for healthcare in urban slums.
The stakeholders came together for a virtual policy dialogue on the state of health and healthcare in urban slums, hosted by the CHORUS Urban Consortium Research Team, based at the Health Policy Research Group (HPRG), University of Nigeria.
Nigeria is rapidly urbanising with about 53 percent of its population living in urban areas. Of the number of urban residents in Nigeria, about 50 percent reside in slums.
According to experts, Nigeria will have more slums in future, if the country’s economy and housing policies do not dramatically improve.
Professor Chinyere Mbachu who manages the CHORUS Project in the country reported the poor state of healthcare in slums, drawing from research evidence collected over a two year-period.
The report revealed that over 80 percent of the informal health providers presented inadequate knowledge of common diseases, which underscores the poor quality of healthcare slum residents are faced with.
Following pertinent concerns raised by Professor Chinyere, who is also a Professor of Community Medicine, Dr Harri Bala from the Federal Ministry of Health mentioned about the social and economic issues confronting the health of those in slums. Particularly, issues around hygiene, sanitation, water, and poor housing conditions compound their health challenges.
He said many live in houses that are not habitable, and always an eyesore whenever it rains, exposing them to a wide range of infections and diseases, yet still faced with either poor quality or complete absence of decent formal healthcare.
Also, an urban planning expert, Dr Victor Onyebueke said “Every slum in Nigeria is an eviction waiting to happen”. For him, as government has refused to recognise slums as residences of people and deserving of some level of attention to be upgraded, the health security of slums may never be achieved.
This is so because slums do not have a consolidated place in government plans, rather government looks forward to a time the slums will be evicted,“ he added.
At the dialogue, it was agreed that increasing urbanisation in the country was already stretching health facilities, and without committed health investments, the current number of health facilities and health workforce will certainly not contain the demand for quality health services.
On the way forward, the Coordinator of HPRG and Director of Research, University of Nigeria, Prof Obinna Onwujekwe reported on ongoing intervention by the CHORUS Project, where informal health providers in slums have been mapped and are currently being pulled into the formal health system.
The intervention aims at enhanced regulation and supervision of the informal health providers to stay within defined scope of service provision and to facilitate timely referral of cases to the closest formal health facility for professional attention.
He emphasised that the ongoing intervention was a product of co-creation, where all stakeholders including the informal/formal health providers, policymakers, and community representatives, guided by research evidence designed and agreed to implement the co-created intervention as a team.
“The ongoing intervention in Enugu State is a low-hanging fruit for the government in the direction of improving health and healthcare in urban slums,“ he added.