Stakeholders in the health sector have cautioned that neglecting those providing hospital-based informal caregiving will continue to slow down the attainment of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Nigeria.
The stakeholders identified these imperatives at the dissemination of the findings of a study on the Lived Experiences of Informal Caregivers who stay around or live in Nigeria Tertiary Hospitals in Southwest, Nigeria, sponsored by the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), held at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, on Thursday.
Describing informal caregivers as central to the care of hospitalized patients, the stakeholders decried that those categories of caregivers continued to be underappreciated for the gaps they are filling in health facilities.
He decried that the caregivers faced health and wellbeing challenges, unconducive health facilities, social isolation for prolonged stay in the hospital, security and safety problems, limited access to water, sanitary practices and good hygiene.
Dr Kudus Adebayo, who presented the report of the findings, said there was a need to prioritise the health of informal caregivers and well-being and key actors in the Nigerian system, provide focused hospitalisation education, and create policies that acknowledge caregivers’ role in hospitalisation care.
He also called for the intensification of efforts to achieve UHC by fixing health inequalities, expanding access to health insurance, improving health facilities, creating a conducive work environment, and reversing the dependence of tertiary health facilities on informal caregivers.
Another member of the research team, Dr Mofeyisara Omobowale identified the need to strengthen existing initiatives designed to reduce the presence of caregivers and lessen the burden of the ones still hanging around hospitals, retrain hospital staff on special caregivers’ sensitivity training.
She also mentioned the importance of correcting institutional dysfunctions that produced the care vacuum that the informal caregivers were filling and identifying opportunities for creative synergies between informal caregivers and the formal care workforce.
Speaking, Permanent Secretary, Oyo Ministry of Health, Dr Olusoji Adeyanju noted that due to inadequate health workers, unaffordability of hospitalisation, and the burden of sickness not being on the sick alone, informal caregivers have become inadvertently institutionalised.
Co-focal person, CARTA, Dr Funke Fayehun, in her remarks, said the foundation looked forward to policy and program formulation and implementation that acknowledge caregivers’ role in hospitalisation care in Nigeria.
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