<![CDATA[Fifty years after independence, Nigeria is still struggling with the provision of basic health services for its teeming population,now estimated at over 150million. The health care sector is still a labour-intensive handicraft industry, in spite of advances intechnology, and health care provision has now become more complicated than in the past. Infant and under-five mortality ratesare near the highest in the world, and maternal mortality is extremely high. It has the second largest number of people infectedwith HIV/AIDS in the world only next to South Africa and in 2008, between 3million and 3.5million people were estimated to beliving with HIV/AIDS. Nigeria has the fourth highest number of TB cases in the world, with a 2004 estimate of 293 new casesper 100,000 population and 546 per 100,000 total cases. The reasons for a dysfunctional health system include: gross inadequate infrastructural support, electricity, potable water and diagnostic laboratories, very low per capita health spending,high out-of-pocket expenditure by citizens, and a total absence of a community-based integrated system for diseaseprevention, surveillance and treatment amongst others. Some strategies to tackle health sector challenges in Nigeria mayinclude improved access to primary healthcare; strategic and purposeful leadership in health delivery services; increasingfunding to the health sector; amongst others.]]>
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