The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)has embarked on strings of trainings for private practitioners and managers of health facilities in Nigeria on funds management to make their access to bank credits easy.
The training forms part of the Private Sector Participation (PSP)-One focus. In this case, to create linkages between financial institutions and private health providers to increase access to finance for private health providers leading to the growth of their private practices.
To enhance this, USAID announced in Lagos on Friday that it has trained 119 doctors so far, while it is going ahead to broker credit deals between them and some commercial banks in the country.
According to Benjamin Adekagun of USAID, Nigeria, the training aims to ultimately increase access to health in Nigeria.
"Training has also been delivered to private providers in learning how to manage private health practices differently with more clients enrolled in HMOs and providing technical updates in key preventive care areas including family planning, malaria, nutrition and routine immunisation," according to the USAID representative.
Meanwhile, private medical practitioners in Nigeria would have opportunities to showcase their products and services next week as Nigeria’s first ever Private Health Sector Trade Fair holds at the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in Lagos.
The trade fair, slated for Friday this week (August 15)is also a programme of USAID’s PSP-One project. The theme is "Growth and Sustainability of Private Health Providers."
Over 40 drugs and allied companies, banks, other financial institutions interested in lending to private medical providers, as well as medical equipment suppliers, pharmaceutical suppliers, and distributors would attend the Fair.
The Fair is supported by the Health and Managed Care Association of Nigeria (HMCAN), the Nigeria Private Nurses and Midwives Association, the Association of Community Pharmacists of Nigeria, and the Guild of Medical Directors of Nigeria.