Evaluation of Health Systems and Health Systems Management - Essay Example

"Evaluation of Health Systems and Health Systems Management" is a perfect example of a paper on the health system. Nigeria is among the most populated nations in Africa. Its population is projected to rise past two hundred million people by 2025 (Nnamuchi, 2009). The rise in urbanization in Nigeria has been growing significantly over the last few years. There are over two hundred and twenty-five ethnic groups in the country with five hundred local languages and numerous religions which include Christianity, Islam and traditional African. Over recent decades, Nigeria has been experiencing economic crisis and political instability that has resulted in the worsening of the national health profile. Nigeria scores poorly on health-wise especially in mortality rates compared to other sub-Saharan nations (Kombe, Gilbert; Lisa Fleisher; Eddie Karissa; Aneesa Arur, Parsa Sanjana, 2009). Various methods were used to study the Nigerian Health Systems and Management.

Methods used

The study used the approach where they assessed the system of national health in the country based on the Health System Model that was initiated by the Abt Associates Systems 20/20 project in conjunction with Rational Pharmaceutical Management. The study used five steps in evaluating the health situation in the country (Kombe, Gilbert; Lisa Fleisher; Eddie Karissa; Aneesa Arur, Parsa Sanjana, 2009). First, the team built the stakeholder's consensus on a methodological approach, scope, period of assessment and expectations. This step was quite significant for the success of the evaluation as the consensus-building involved members from all over the country (Onotai and Brisibe, 2010). The representation diversity makes a strong study background. After the consensus-building, the stakeholders had a three-day workshop for collecting the data from respective states that were represented. Again group interviews were also conducted to get additional information. This aspect may have some shortcomings as it could not have given equal representation of all states. Again some stakeholders may not be having all the information about the health status of their states. After the data collection, the team took the time to assess the validation of the data (Williamson, 2008). The workshop participants went to their respective states to collect more data on missing variables. This step served to address the shortcoming that might have occurred in the previous step. The next step was the health document review and the qualitative and quantitative data interpretation. Finally, the analysis of data was done where the study of each component of the health system was done. The methodology used proved to be imperative as it identified weaknesses, strengths, and opportunities in the health system approach.

Findings

The study showed that there were significant imbalances in the states of Nigeria in distributing health deployment strategies. It also identified that there was an uneven distribution of health workers across the states (Kombe, Gilbert; Lisa Fleisher; Eddie Karissa; Aneesa Arur, Parsa Sanjana, 2009). A little investment in the health sector in comparison to the enormous population and the disease burden is also a factor worth noting.  The service delivery was found to be poor as the number of beds per unit number of people was found to be a poor ratio (Welcome, 2011). Finally, the data collected showed that most states had limited budgets on the health information systems.

Conclusion

From the findings that were obtained it is clear that the health operations in Nigeria were very complex. The data indicated that there was a little investment in the health systems and small budgetary allocations; this means that there should be an improvement on the same. To sum up, the nation should try to upgrade its systems of health. The findings were valid based on the information that was obtained from the health systems in Nigeria.