As part of recommendations to reduce frequent strikes by university lecturers and rising cases of child deaths in the country, Chief Medical Director (CMD) of Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, Prof. Christopher Bode, has urged the Federal Government to deregulate funding of public tertiary education and build children-specific hospitals.

In his inaugural lecture entitled ‘Bloom Where You Are Planted: From Paediatric Surgeon to Hospital Administrator’, yesterday, in Lagos, the consultant surgeon said: “Government should boldly deregulate the funding of public university education and limit its roles to overall policy formulation, giving grants to institutions, awarding scholarships, bursary and loans to students, while enabling public educational institutions to charge fair tuition for good training.

“There is too much unionism in our tertiary institutions and our unions are still using 1970 Marxist ideologies to dictate how schools should run. We still refer to ourselves as ‘Comrades’ in 2022. Our unions should think out of the box and stop holding the educational and health sectors back from growing. Nothing good is free, especially in this unapologetic era of global capitalism.”

According to Bode, universities should wean themselves off government handouts and meaningfully interact with the town, industries and grants authorities for better and healthier funding. He said productivity in Nigerian universities should mean more than a secure tenure, while society waits for game-changing leadership from the ivory tower.

The CMD stressed the need to promote training of frontline healthcare workers on the early recognition and proper handling of paediatric surgical emergencies to improve on surgical outcomes in this group.

Investment in the surgical care of children is a wise choice to ensure a healthy future for Nigeria, he added.

“Children’s health should not be an after-thought to be granted on the plan for adults. Nigeria needs children-specific hospitals, which are fully dedicated to the care of our little ones. Surgical facilities in such centres will save the lives of many who were denied access to and delayed surgical care in our few over-burdened centres now,” Bode said.

The surgeon said Nigeria must decide who pays for healthcare, since it is a goldmine for investors, if properly configured .

He said universal coverage by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) with appropriate price structure that ensures fair pay for work done by hospitals will allow Nigeria to retain its healthcare workforce and improve the facilities to international standards. “Government will have ample tax returns from this sector,” he said.

Bode said Nigeria must continue to invest in the training of specialists in the various sub-fields of surgery and plan to absorb and nurture those produced, rather than allow them to be lured out by richer nations, which can pay them more.