An Introduction to Health Care Procurement in Nigeria and Its Relationship to Development

Abstract

Public procurement may be described as the process through which a government purchases the goods, services and works it requires to function and maximise public welfare.Public procurement covers a wide range of activities from the purchase of everyday items such as pens and paper to the construction of dams, hospitals, schools and to contracts for services such as financial and legal services and even research and development contracts.Procurement accounts for a large measure of government spending, especially in developing countries where infrastructure and social needs remain unmet for the vast majority of the population.Despite the importance of procurement to development, there is little academic information on public procurement, especially in relation to health care procurement and its relationship and importance to development. Health care procurement has thus received little attention in Nigeria, either from policy makers or academics despite its importance to the attainment or the non-attainment of the MDGs. This paper adopts a doctrinal analysis of the healthcare procurement law and framework in Nigeria, and using the UK as a case study, illustrates that a holistic approach to healthcare procurement in Nigeria can serve to accelerate our development