MANAGEMENT OF PRIMARY HEALTHCARE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN NIGERIA AND GHANA: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Primary healthcare management was a baby of the Alma Ata declaration which was signed by more than one hundred countries around the world. Although the goal of primary healthcare management of ensuring better and accessible primary healthcare services at the doorsteps of every person may be the same, the strategies and capacities to achieve these valuable objectives may be different, this is depending on individual countries strength and capacity. There is therefore the need to identify the similarities in the implementation of primary healthcare among the two countries, with the view to serve as lessons for others to emulate. It is a qualitative study, in which a semi-structured interview was conducted using the adapted African regional tools for assessing primary healthcare management. In each of the two countries studied, ten experts were interviewed in accordance with the themes as provided, in addition, a desktop review of primary healthcare management was conducted using the Pub med and Google machine to arrive at the conclusion. The study found similarities in the management of primary healthcare among the two countries. Most significantly were the disease trends, primary healthcare policies and implementation strategies including categories of staff that provides the basics healthcare services at the primary healthcare levels and the level of corruption that has continued to weaken the provision of primary healthcare services in the two countries. The study revealed that Policies and Implementation strategies in Nigeria and Ghana were encouraging. However, the incidence of corruption has been the key impediment to the better implementation of primary healthcare services in the two countries. Therefore a holistic approach to ending the menace of corruption is necessary if only primary healthcare is to be accessible to the people, particularly at the grassroots.