Only 22 of 290 Revitalised PHCs Found With Functional Ambulances
By GLEBM News Desk
Only 22 out of 290 primary healthcare centres assessed across six Nigerian states were found to have functional ambulances, raising fresh concerns about the operational readiness of facilities listed as revitalised.
The findings are contained in the 2026 PHC Operational Capability Report produced through the MyPHC project of Orodata Science and presented at a healthcare stakeholders’ town hall meeting in Lagos.
The investigation examined primary healthcare centres in Abia, Benue, Cross River, Kano, Osun and Taraba states and compared official claims of revitalisation with conditions observed during physical visits.
Researchers assessed infrastructure, staffing, electricity, water supply, equipment, healthcare services, accessibility and emergency response capacity.
Of the 290 facilities assessed, 153 were recorded as having completed work, while 41 were still undergoing work. Another 17 had not been started, 21 had stalled and five facilities had reportedly been completed but remained locked or had not been put into use.
This means 91 facilities fell into categories where work had either not started, stalled, been abandoned or had been completed without the facilities becoming operational.
The investigation also found visible defects in 73 of the 153 facilities where work was reported as completed.
Only 85 facilities, representing about 29 per cent of those assessed, met the benchmark used by the researchers for revitalisation. Another 170 partially met the benchmark, while 35 failed to meet it.
The weakest areas included equipment, supplies, construction and renovation, with researchers noting that some facilities had renovated structures but lacked the equipment required to deliver effective healthcare services.
The findings raise questions about the difference between infrastructure expenditure and actual healthcare readiness, particularly in communities where primary healthcare centres serve as the first point of contact for medical care.
The researchers called for greater transparency around contracts, payments and physical verification of revitalisation projects, arguing that communities and oversight institutions should be able to establish whether funds allocated for healthcare infrastructure produced the intended results.
State health officials responding to the findings pointed to ongoing investments and differences in funding arrangements between facilities. They also noted that not all primary healthcare centres receive support from the same funding sources.
The report nevertheless highlights the importance of ensuring that healthcare infrastructure programmes are measured not simply by buildings completed but by whether facilities have the personnel, equipment, electricity, medicines, emergency transport and other resources required to provide functional services.
For Nigeria’s primary healthcare system, the challenge is increasingly one of converting investment into operational capacity that communities can actually access when they need care.
