The Federal Government has developed five health promotion Strategic Policy documents to empower Nigerians to live healthy lives and adopt healthy behaviours.
Dr Salma Anas-Kolo, the Director, Family Health, Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH), said this at the opening of a two-day Fourth Quarter 2020 National Health Promotion Forum (NHPF) meeting in Abuja on Tuesday.
Anas-Kolo, the Chairperson of NHPF, said that the forum was able to facilitate technical and financial support for the development of a compendium of the documents in 2020.
The documents include the National Adolescent Strategy for Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child Adolescent Health Plus Nutrition Programmes and the Knowledge Management Guideline for Health Promotion.
Others are the Revised National Integrated Reproductive Newborn Child Adolescent and Elderly Health Plus Nutrition Social and Behaviours; Counseling Flip Chart on Key Household Practices and the Counseling Flip Chart on Family Planning/Child Birth Spacing.
According to her, another key achievement by the forum in 2020 was the ministerial presentation and the national launch of the Revised National Health Promotion Policy 2019 and the compendium of the strategic documents.
Effective implementation of these strategic policy documents would ensure health promotion programming in Nigeria: steps out
of its less successful past; become formidable contributor to the achievement of the health related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“The documents will become formidable contributors to the achievement of health-related SDGs and active vehicles for the attainable of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
The director added that it would also foster sector and inter-sectoral collaboration to deliver critical interventions that would make healthy choices the easier choice for the people of Nigeria.”
The official said that the meeting was aimed at securing buy-in of all key stakeholders in successful implementation of the National Health Promotion Policy 2019.
She said deliberate efforts were required to successfully harness the benefits of health promotion in improving health, well-being and economic development.
“I implore you to participate actively so as to make the meeting engaging, dynamic and stimulating for maximum output.’’
The chairperson noted that the last meeting was held in May 2020 virtually due to the ongoing COVID-91 pandemic.
She said that the fourth meeting earlier scheduled to hold in December 2020 could not hold until today due to paucity of funds.
On next step, the director said that the forum would involve selected states to facilitate health promotion activities across the country.
In her remarks, Mrs Ladidi Bako-Aiyegbusi, the Director, Health Promotion Division, FMoH, said health promotion had been repositioned for results.
“All materials that we developed were sent to the states before the inauguration of the documents and they are to improve the states’ involvement in health promotion across the country,’’ she said.
Reports state that the National Health Promotion Forum, a multi-sectoral advisory platform, was resuscitated in March 2018 to promote successful working relationship, open discussions, increase transparency and opportunities toward leveraging resources from stakeholders.
The forum is also to leverage resources from stakeholders for infrastructure and human capacity development and harmonise health massages aimed at promoting healthy behaviour across sectors, and at individual, household, community and institutional levels.