…Laments under utilisation of allocation
By Ogaga Ariemu
Chairman Senate Committee on Health, Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe has revealed that Three years budgetary allocation for Primary Health care is yet to be released.
Oloriegbe disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja during the launch of “The State of Primary Health Care Service Delivery in Nigeria” report organized by One Campaign in collaboration with other partners.
According to him, aside Federal Government’s capacity to provide primary health care to every Nigerians, under-utilisation of budget allocation is a major setback.
“It is not only that Federal Government do not have capacity, but also the Health Ministry do not fully utilize budgetary allocation.
“Can you imagine that the health sector returned monies back that was not spent. it happened in this 2022; in 2021 it almost happened.
“We are crying that we don’t have enough yet monies allocated for health are yet to be spent despite the fact budget implementation was extended to May 31st 2022.
“For instance, the Basic Health Care Provision Fund(BHCPF), we have 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021,2022, however only 2018-2019 have been released. 2019-2022 are yet to be released. We still have 3-years money lying in the account of Federal Health Ministryvand Nigerians are suffering,” he stated.
He urged that advocacy should be channeled towards pushing Federal Government as well as the States on the need to fully implement all primary health interventions.
Senator Oloriegbe further stated that there is need for States to contribute their counterpart fundings to primary health care.
Earlier, ONE Campaign’s Nigeria Director, Stanley Achonu, disclosed that inadequate infrastructure, lack of human resources, others are major impediments to improving Nigeria’s primary health care.
According to him, “Weak governance continues to pose a major obstacle to improved healthcare delivery. It hampers efficiency and effectiveness and results in weak infrastructure, poor user experiences, and poor health outcomes. The burden of strengthening the healthcare systems and services lies heavily on governance and leadership. At all levels, the government needs to take responsibility as a building block of the health system, especially in system design, policy guidance, oversight, regulation, accountability, coalition building, monitoring, and enforcement.
“The success recorded with polio eradication, containment of Ebola and the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that Nigeria can deliver on critical health issues given the required political will and leadership commitment. We have to act quickly to avert primary healthcare collapse.”
Five States namely; Federal Capital Territory(FCT), Enugu, Anambra, Ekiti and Delta beat other States in primary health care service delivery.