By: IndyPress News Desk
A Professor of Health Economics at the University of Ibadan, Professor Akanni Olayinka Lawanson, on Thursday, 5th December 2024, has submitted that alternative mechanism in social health insurance which ensures wide coverage of the population, with water-tight regulatory measures to prevent moral hazard and adverse selection, is required for easy access to health care by the majority, and for the health status of the Nigerian population to improve.
Professor Lawanson made the submission while delivering the 569th Inaugural Lecture of the University of Ibadan on behalf of the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences.
The lecture was titled, “Turn On The Mic: The Tradeoff Between Information and Corruption”.
Professor Lawanson noted that corruption in its various forms has negatively affected resources available to the health sector.
He said corruption has also negatively affected the distribution of the financial burden across the actors in the sector with adverse implications on the population health outcomes.
Professor Lawanson, therefore, recommended that any anti-corruption strategy to be adopted must embrace transparency and accountability.
He said the strategy must also have a mechanism for the detection of offences and enforcement of related laws to punish offenders in addition to preventing or minimizing the occurrence of corruption.
The inaugural lecturer said information disclosure is central, saying that the deployment of information technology was the way to go.
He, however, warned that the adoption of information technology should be geared towards enhancing the development of technical infrastructure for the detection of irregularities, with the solid legal framework for the prosecution of corrupt individuals, in not only the health sector but other sectors of the economy.
He said that the general public should be enlightened about the rights of patients in their dealings with the health workers.
This, he said, would go a long way in reducing the severity of information asymmetry between health workers and patients.
Professor Lawanson also advocated that the way forward for health financing in Nigeria is to embrace the social insurance scheme and make it work more than it currently does.
Credit: UI Directorate of Public Communication
