Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the framing of health needs and coverage in Nigeria between 1936 and 1988, amid the shifting local and global politics of disease control, sanitary organisation, health financing, training, and the diversification of health and medical services.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on attempts to consolidate the organisation of health services in colonial and independent Nigeria, examining how developing modes of planning in international public health were articulated locally amid the politics of health care, regionalisation, and state and economic planning in Nigeria. It traces the organisational forms, information flows, and agents of planning and consolidation at regional and federal level, as well as the effects of global programmes and international governmental and philanthropic health financing on trends in health services organisation.

Specifically, it examines how need and coverage were framed and assessed amid the shifting politics of disease control, sanitary organisation, health financing, training, and the diversification of health and medical services as bodies such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation became more prominent in guiding sectoral reform in health services, and the strengthening of developing world health services. Tracing the interplay of programmes, ideas, and policies, from early moves to regulate health services at a colony-wide level in the 1930s to the publication of 'The National Health Policy and Strategy to Achieve Health for all Nigerians' in 1988, it offers a system-wide perspective on medicine, health, equity, and coverage in Nigeria.