Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has said that coronavirus revealed Nigeria did not have a health system before the outbreak of the pandemic.
He, however, noted that in the bid to tackle the virus, the Nigerian health sector had now recorded a significant development.
Gbajabiamila spoke on Thursday when he received the report of the Sectoral Roundtable Session on Nigeria’s healthcare delivery system organised by the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs.
The report titled ‘The Green Book’ from chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Benjamin Kalu, at the National Assembly, was received by the Speaker, who said the House would pay more attention to issues relating to health, which he described as an important part of any society.
“We have the Green Chambers and now we have the Green Book. We will continue with the greens, sector by sector, as we go along.He said.
“It is instructive that the first one is on health. We all said it here that the whole world was thrown into disarray with the advent of COVID-19; even the most advanced democracies and the most developed health sectors did not know what to do. They were caught napping.
“In our case in Nigeria, it brought out the underbelly of the country. We did not even have a health sector; we only have a semblance of a health sector and I am very happy that we were able to rise up to the challenges.
“It is not what will be fixed in one or two or three years; the deficit is so wide that it will take a number of years to fix it. But the most important thing is that we have started and we are on track.
“And I believe that if we continue on this track, Nigeria we will get there,” he said.
Speaking further he said, “Within two weeks, I inspected two major facilities in Lagos: a cancer centre — you need to go there; you cannot find anything better in the world; and another hospital in Lekki, and I am opening another one in April.
“So, out of the pandemic, something has come up that is of immense benefit to Nigerians.
“It is unfortunate that it took that ( pandemic) but it is one thing to be caught napping and not do anything about it, and it is another thing to be caught napping and fix the problem; and that is what, exactly, we are trying to do.”