Identification and Review of Common Challenges Militating against the Attainment of Health-related Millennium Development Goals in Rural Nigeria

Aim: To ascertain common challenges militating against the attainment of the health related Millennium Development Goals in 2015 in Brass Local Government Area of Bayelsa State and to make policy recommendations.

Methods: A systematic qualitative review of related studies aimed at identifying common challenges facing the implementation and actualization of health related Millennium Development Goals was carried out through electronic database, books, and primary data from relevant institutions in the State. Purposeful sampling was done due to the peculiarity of the subject matter. Data were selected and reviewed from 2000-2014, except few included that dated back were relevant to this study. From the search, eighty [80] materials were accessed, but fifty [50] were selected for the review based on pertinent. A thematic analysis was done. The documents accessed were read through, cod-able areas were highlighted, extracted and collated into themes in a coding template. After re-grouping, the units of analysis were identified.

Findings: Six outstanding issues were seen as factors militating against the actualization of the health related millennium development goals as viz; leadership 33%, finance 16%, corruption 10%, crisis 6%, man-power, 8% and inaccessibility 6% amounting to 79% of the eleven identified themes. Out of these six, due to word limit, four are discussed.

Conclusion: The aim of this article was to elicit common challenges facing the implementation process. 11 were identified, out of that number, 6 were selected as they were peculiar to the setting under review and 4 were discussed due to word limit. What seemingly militate against the implementation in the area under review are leadership and its related variables.