Primary health care spending is guaranteed but the funds are caught up in appropriation

 

Delta state governor Ifeanyi Okowa has urged “strong advocacy” to help President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration get to grips with implementing the National Health Act (NHA), more than eight months after it was passed into law last December.

 

Okowa, who chaired the Senate health committee in the National Assembly instrumental to passing the health act, said parts of the NHA that requires funding of primary health care were crucial, insisting, “there must be a provision for it in the 2016 appropriation.”

 

Speaking as the National Postgraduate Medical College convened in Abuja for its 10th scientific conference and congress of fellows, Okowa said it was imperative for all stakeholders to push the act toward implementation.

 

“It is just drawing our consciousness to where we are at the moment. There is a new administration. We need to carry out a lot of advocacy—they were not there when [the Act] was passed into law,” said Okowa.

 

“What I feel we need now is a clear national strategy that defines the comprehensive vision of a health care system that creates value for both the patient and healthcare provider and the processes required to achieve it,” he added.

 

 

Since December, the federal health ministry put up several committees meant to draw up framework to guide every aspect of the Act, including regulation roles and development of human resource for health, but are yet to produce results.

 

Health permanent secretary Linus Awute said, “Reports of the committees are being awaited right now. They have asked for extension, and I have given them.”

 

Expressing concern for speed to implement the Act, he said, “I don’t want a situation where people out there who know there’s an Act will look at us as being stupid.”

 

President of the Postgraduate Medical College, Dr Rasheed Arogundade, has also sought intervention from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund to finance a proposed clinical skills and simulation laboratory to aid medical training.

 

By Judd-Leonard Okafor 

Daily Trust