Search results

Nigeria remains the largest economy in Africa. However, its health sector is described as weak. It continues to battle several challenges ranging from poor health infrastructure, inaccessibility of good quality health care, corruption, substandard drugs circulating, poor funding, shortage of healthcare personnel, high cost of healthcare amidst poverty-stricken masses, among others. The outbreak of Covid-19 and the global oil price crash have further impacted Nigeria’s dwindling healthcare service delivery/indicators. This chapter thus takes stock of the status of the healthcare indicators, healthcare systems, and healthcare governance in Nigeria before and during the Covid-19 pandemic to decipher the impact of the damage caused by Covid-19 on the already weak Nigeria’s health sector. It discusses healthcare indicators, system constraints and responses, and the demand and supply of health care in Nigeria in the era of Covid-19. This chapter shows how Covid-19 has negatively and positively affected the healthcare sector in Nigeria. However, the negative impact remains overwhelming and has potentially grave consequences. This study thus develops a policy framework and time-tested strategy to recover Nigeria’s health sector while factoring in the present capabilities of Nigeria’s health sector. This study thus recommends that adequate infrastructure investment and welfare for healthcare workers are important for the recovery of Nigeria’s health sector.

Governance involves the maintenance and improvement of the quality of life and safety of the people. It is a collaborative process that describes the cooperative efforts of all levels of government to ensure that the people enjoy a decent living and are protected from disasters and outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the world is facing a new normal arrangement in almost all the economic and social sectors because of restrictions that are brought about by the pandemic with severe challenges on governance and public service delivery. There is an increasing need, therefore, for policymakers to adjust the pattern of public service delivery and policy formulations to curtail the spread of the virus amidst several conspiracies. This chapter adopts the conspiracy theory to explain how the disbelief concerning the existence of the virus promotes its spread in the workplace and the need to embrace and enhance digital transformations in areas such as teleworking, flexible working, health and safety at the workplace, and work-life balance, for optimal service delivery. Data for this chapter were generated through the review of extant literature. The paper makes relevant recommendations for policymakers, managers and administrators in this dispensation and beyond.

The new post-pandemic normal reveals challenging features of living through a crisis, including a heightened sense of fear and the awareness of one’s limitations. Some of the challenges have been identified as relating to shifts in employer–employee interfaces or doctor–patient interactions; to increased effort to embrace rapid digitalisation while maintaining interpersonal relations; and to increased pressure to adapt flexibly to financial and structural changes. These are embedded in a greater (and mostly positive) consciousness of human and organisational interconnectedness.

This chapter looks at the parallel experiences of business and health systems as they endeavour to thrive during and beyond a pandemic. The authors recognise the intricate relationship between businesses and health as they feed each other’s overall growth directly or indirectly. Businesses create wealth through a healthy regard for the well-being of their stakeholders while healthcare systems are affected by their own business structures. In both cases, responsible leadership and fairness help to avoid an unhealthy prioritisation of profit.

This chapter reflects on the various routes businesses and health care can take to preserve fairness through ethical leadership. The authors focus on six stakeholders (employee, customer, shareholder, society or community, environment, and creditors) who need to be appropriately cared for and prioritised. The authors consider how promoting human competencies can affect skill acquisition, emotional intelligence, spiritual, and moral growth in both spaces. At the core of our discussion is the concept of self-leadership, which boosts the organisational leadership that in turn determines the kind of future we will have in the new normal.