Tag: Healthcare

A senior lecturer at the Department of Actuarial Science and Insurance, University of Lagos, Prof. Tajudeen Yusuf, has called on the Federal government to legislate mandatory walking for Nigerians, noting that it could significantly reduce the nation’s healthcare expenditure.

He made the call on during the 2025 Walk for Life, Peace and Unity, an annual health awareness event organised by the Human Concern Foundation International (HCFI), aimed at promoting physical and mental well-being, unity, and peaceful coexistence.

Prof. Yusuf described walking as a simple, yet powerful habit that boosts physical health, reduces economic strain, and contributes to national well-being.

“If the Nigerian government can legislate mandatory walking for citizens, I assure you it will drastically cut down our budget on curative medicine. Prevention is better than cure. Walking helps prevent all kinds of illnesses,” Prof. Yusuf said.

According to him, “Walking helps prevent avoidable diseases and cuts down on healthcare spending. Personally, walking is my lifestyle. I can’t remember the last time I visited a hospital or even used paracetamol.”

The Don also highlighted its spiritual value of walking and regular exercise, explaining that it is embedded in Islamic acts of worship.

The Convener and Executive Director of HCFI, Prof. Ibrahim Oreagba, called for harmony and national cohesion in Nigeria.

“At this point in time in our country, we need peace and unity. We’ve come a long way as a nation, and we believe we all have a lot to benefit from one another when we work together in a peaceful environment,” he said.

Prof. Oreagba noted that beyond the symbolic call for unity, the walk also aimed to raise public awareness about the health benefits of walking, which many people still overlook.

“We use this event to sensitise the public on the significance of walking as a form of exercise. Walking for at least 30 minutes daily helps reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and stroke. It also supports mental wellness and can even reduce cancer risk,” he added.

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The Muslim Congress Secretary General, Alhaji Taiwo Adesina, urged Nigerians to adopt walking as a consistent lifestyle practice.

He said regular walking requires intentionality, especially for those who own vehicles and are accustomed to minimal physical activity.

Alhaji Adesina noted that walking naturally boosts endorphin levels, promoting a sense of well-being that some seek through unhealthy means like substance abuse.

He added that trekking also supports physical and even sensual strength, referencing its alignment with exercises like Kegels.

Executive Secretary, Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC) Nigeria, Kazeem Akindunbi extolled HCFI for organising the walk, describing it as a meaningful exercise that benefits every participant in powerful ways.

Akindunbi said the walk was a timely push for many to restore their energy and reconnect with others.

He said walking is one of the simplest habits with enormous health benefits, including reducing the risk of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, obesity, and depression.

“It strengthens the body, calms the mind, and creates space for reflection, helping build healthier and more balanced individuals ready to contribute positively to society,” he noted.

• By Ibanga Inyang

Imparting compassion in the process of healthcare can amplify the benefit of the act. The limitation of only physical professional or mental competence output during care act is aptly portrayed by the following two short testimonies.

About 12 years ago, a man in a foreign country who had been under medication for several years for chronic multi-morbidities lamented – “I live daily on medicines they give me, but I die every day from their lack of showing affection for me”. This man learnt “caring” from the unsavoury side.

Contrast this with my anecdotal glow, six months ago in my country over 4000 kilometres away from the episode above. I was not feeling well, so I lumbered into a roadside pharmacy shop in my town of residence (Uyo) to buy some drugs. I also requested that my blood pressure be measured. The young woman in the shop who attended to me agreed, measured my blood pressure and told me the reading. I screamed because of what I thought I heard – “180 over…?” The young woman promptly and affably corrected me – “No, I did not say 180 over…, God forbid; that is not your portion; I said 130 over….”

In my local residence culture, the pronouncement of “God forbid,” or “not your portion,” evinces the acme of goodwill, passion and supportive spirituality. It was not the correct but dispassionate yield of the healthcare apparatus that afforded me leaving the point of service with the veritable sprint of a healthy teenager (despite my old age!), it was the empathy shown by the health worker. Combined with a compassionate heart of the care provider, the therapeutic effect of the fingers was enhanced and care ingrained in the service.

In medical terms, care connotes the way and process of looking after or holistically paying attention to sustain the person in health and the life-course of value. It may entail the deployment of appropriate materials and technology, and ensuring that opportunities are not missed to provide a continuum of crucial interventions (including disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and support on healing pathway).

Centring care “is a patient-focused approach. It is a healthcare model that places the patient at the centre of decision-making. It emphasises the importance of building a strong relationship between the healthcare provider and the patient for effective care.”

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The onus of implementing the ideals of person-centred care, though subject to the social determinants of health, falls on the health workers at various professional or vocational levels, and in diverse care delivery settings. Examples of the social determinants of health, which can influence health equity in positive and negative ways, include: income and social protection, education, unemployment and job security, working-life conditions, the environment, non-stigmatization, early childhood development, social inclusion, non-discrimination, and access to affordable health services of decent quality. In some environments, the social determinants can be more important than health care or lifestyle choice in influencing health.

Patient-centred care impels regarding every person who seeks or needs care as unique with peculiar attention imperatives. But there is this important question of how the health worker advanced into the healthcare system; that it was not the allurement of the prestige of the medical field, transactional consideration of material gains or just an employment opportunity, but a noble commitment to serving humans with wholesomeness of the heart and mind.

Are best performing care outcome providers made, or born as such? The motive may not be discernible through conventional aptitude tests for admission into training institutions. This discourse focuses on medical education and the provider determinants of health care because person-centred care actors, health and social care professionals, can operate synergistically and collaboratively with people who need and use their service acts. This carevice approach minimises the veracity of the viewpoint that “often, health care does ‘to’ or ‘for’ people rather than ‘with”

An initiative of any work-frame entity to re-invigorate and revitalise care acts in the overarching health care system is plausible, to state the least consideration. It is an aspirational thrust in exploiting and catalysing innovative and coordinated definitive solutions to factors that raise challenges inherent in formalising a person-centred health care approach. Such an initiative would be a transformative investment for humanity.

In this discourse, a logical framework of creative interventions aggregated in four pillars of integrity has the viable prospect of driving the initiative to achieve its aim. The synergistic pillars are medical education, clinical settings, community landscapes, and evaluation configurations. These four pillars encompass all the facets and domains of the act of caring, from doctrine conceptualisation and curriculum formulation through policy and practice, to research.

Of course, there will be the challenge of articulating indicators of variables specific for compassionate heart and mind, without impugning the integrity of the sensitivity of the composite and overall yardstick for measuring quality of healthcare content and outcome, in a setting or context of interest. Furthermore, in the context of centring care, the norms and values that are ingredients of medical ethics may not be expressed in a way that is direct and clear in the curriculum of medical education at various levels. Some may even be regarded as antithetic to some aspects of professionalism and not amenable to check-list-based assessment in the care process. But centring care entails reversing the decline of empathy during the care act. Thus, the initiative to strengthen the centring care pathway may entail disrupting some apathetic perspectives and practice inclination.

The social determinants of health can influence care access process and outcome in some negative or unfavourable ways. Those negative elements may be assuaged by the positive provider determinants of care. These positive provider determinants include kindness, longsuffering, humbleness of mind, meekness, forbearing the care receiver, charity as the bond of caring and not as ostentation. Others are paying attention to perceived or expressed needs, respecting the care target person and reducing health and social pressure where the demands from these can be modified by provider’s voluntary inconvenience and emotional support. These provider determinants do not compromise professionalism or legalism, or quality of care; nor imply circumvention of quality drivers and assurance.

Evidence and anecdotal experience support the perception that there is a need to implement patient centred care more purposefully in the health care pathway. Some elements of care centring have been highlighted. One challenge is how to measure the contribution of compassionate hearts as a discrete factor or positive contributor in the care outcome. But there is the adage that “what gets measured gets done.”

This is also an opportunity to practicalise the much-vaunted “bottom-up approach.” In this case, defining “centring care” in conceptual and operational terms, enunciating discrete indicators from a detached view point, using this cache or charter of indicators to measure compassion attributes and contribution to care outcome, its contribution to long duration healthy living, and entrenching these tenets in the training formats and educational curriculum.

•Inyang, a medical practitioner, writes from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State