Primary healthcare gulps 64% funding in health sector – Minister

The federal government said it has changed the structure of healthcare funding in the country, with an increase in primary healthcare funds in the health sector.
The new funding structure indicates an increase in the funding from 18 per cent to 64 per cent.
The Minister of Health, Prof.
Isaac Adewole, who revealed this while speaking at the launch of Technical Support Programme (TSP), for the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), recently in Abuja, said the rise in funding is linked to several interventions by the federal government on polio, vaccination, nursing and midwifery among other programmes. Prof. Adewole stated that it was imperative in focusing on the primary health care subsector, because of the challenge of accessibility and affordability in rural areas.
He said: “We need to turn things around to focus on primary health care where our people go to, and that is the facility closest to our people.
“So investing in PHC is the right way to go.
Over the last two years, we have changed the funding structure and the ED will testify to the fact that the agency is gulping the largest chunk of our allocation.
“When we started, it was from 18 percent, and the last moved to 64 per cent.” Speaking, the Executive Director, NPHCDA, Dr.
Faisal Shuaib, decried the increasing cases of shortage of technical support across the 36 states and FCT.
Shuaib explained that states continue to struggle with cold chain maintenance and delivery of vaccines in the right quantity to the right place and at the right time, as well as shortage of human resources for health among others.
He said: “The persistence of these challenges clearly highlights the need for the NPHCDA to improve on the delivery of its mandate to provide policy direction, technical and logistics support to states and local government areas (LGAs) to implement PHC services across the 36 states and FCT.” Also speaking, an official of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Jenny Segueira, tasked the federal government to improve its tracking mechanism in the implementation of PHC programmes.

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