Cultural Diversity and the Challenge of Health Planning in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper attempted to contribute to the problem solving discourse on human development parameters in Nigeria especially in health, education, security and good governance. The cultural diversities equally manifest in diversity of health care demands and outcomes. The clarification of the concepts of cultural diversity, health planning was done in the context of Nigeria. The third section explained the facts of Nigeria's poor health statistics that tends to correspond more to zones of high density of ethnic or cultural concentration. That is, states and zones with high ethnic concentration produce poor maternal and child health status also especially inter or intra-ethnic conflicts. It is concluded that culture embedded practices of the diverse peoples making the nation Nigeria is the root and primary explanant of the poor health profile notwithstanding the huge annual public investments and external donor funds. Also that a grand health planning and framework will not work in producing desired health development until cultural factors accounting for failure in health programs are studied and explained with hard data.