The Federal Government on Friday signed a tripartite agreement of 15 million dollars (N2.46 billion) grant with the Norwegian Government for the reduction of maternal and neonatal deaths in Kaduna, Kano and Katsina states.

The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, made the fact known in Abuja during the signing of the agreement involving the ministry, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and Clinton Access Initiative.

“The Norwegian Government is supporting Nigeria with 15 million dollars; they are giving Nigeria this money as a grant to support the work we are doing in terms of maternal and child health.

“This is to ensure that we meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targets next year as far as goal number four and five.

“We call it tripartite agreement because to execute it, both countries agreed that we will use the Clinton Health Action Initiative, called CHAI.

“CHAI has been working for us in Nigeria and has demonstrated capability and capacity to work in the health sector, particularly in maternal and child health,’’ Chukwu said.

He said in conjunction with key partners, the ministry developed the Harmonised Country Plan of Priority Interventions for 2014 to 2015 (HCPPI).

The minister said it was built mainly on three existing health sector plans, namely the Saving One Million Lives Initiative, the UN Commission on Life-saving Commodities and the MDG Acceleration Framework.

He said the plan represented a call to action to all states and partners to improve programming and focus more resources on the identified, evidence-based, cost-effective and scalable interventions.

“Through this plan we aim to save an additional 420,000 maternal and children’s lives by 2015 at a total cost of 650 million dollars as identified in the plan.

“We have an estimated funding gap of 420 million dollars; we have available commitment totalling 121 million dollars currently being mobilised through projects from partners, leaving 299 million dollars outstanding,’’ Chukwu said.

He added that the agreement represented one of many efforts to meet the resources gap.

In his speech, Mr Rolf Ree, Norway’s Ambassador to Nigeria, said it would help to accelerate improvement in maternal, newborn and child health in the three states.

Ree said the challenges in maternal, newborn and child health was mainly resources.

He said the grant would enable Nigeria to improve and move forward in the attainment of the MDGs.