Imperative Political Behaviour for Effective Incapacitation of Pandemics (Covid-19) in Africa: overview of Primary Healthcare in Nigerian context

Abstract

The role that primary health care (PHC) and primary healthcare systems (PHC-S) ought to play to effectively mitigate pandemics such as the COVID-19 in the African continent is examined. Given the veracity of pandemics (i.e. coronavirus) on African communities located within local government domains which manifestly portray the nature of PHC-S, the examination of primary care of the continent becomes imperative. Available evidence suggests that PHC in Africa is under-funded, underdeveloped, dysfunctional as well as often disregarded in the overall scheme of public investment in the health sector policy matrix. These findings derive from qualitative meta-analysis of literatures on primary care in Nigerian context, of which the observations are the basis of generalization for the African continent. Hence, a key goal of the paper is to describe the character of PHC-S of Africa, outlining how it constitutes hindrance to PHC’s effective contribution to overcome pandemics like COVID-19, and thereby help to suggest reform measures necessary for African PHC-S to meaningfully support the overpowering of any healthiness epidemic such as coronavirus and every other reviving and future pandemic.

Keywords: Primary health care; COVID-19/coronavirus; pandemic; primary healthcare system; qualitative meta-analysis; Africa (Nigeria context)