From John Adams, Minna
Stakeholders in the health sector in the country have advocated for more inclusion of women in the management of Primary Health Care Centres (PHCC) in the country to enhance effective service delivery in the sector.
They also called for adequate funding for primary healthcare in the country for the attainment of the universal health declaration which they argued remains far from being achieved in the country.
These were part of the resolutions by the stakeholders at the just-concluded two-day capacity-building workshop in Minna for Ward Development Committees (WDCs) and Officers in Charge (OICs) on Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) financial management and Basic Health Care Provision Fund business plan development, organised by the Federation of Muslim Women’s Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN), Niger State chapter in partnership with the Niger State Ministry for Primary Healthcare.
The workshop, which drew participants from across all the primary healthcare centres in the state, was meant to address weak financial oversight and a lack of capacity for the timely retirement of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) in the healthcare facilities in the state.
In their various submissions, they argued that 90 per cent of those who used the primary healthcare facilities in the country are women, and therefore there is a need for the inclusion of more women in the ward development committees that manage these facilities for overall service delivery in the country.
According to them, women are better managers of resources, which is key to the success of PHCC in the country, maintaining that the inclusion of more women in the management of PHC facilities will promote gender equality and strengthen primary healthcare in the country.
Mr. Isah Adamu of the Niger State Health Agency, in the paper “Introduction to Inclusive Representation and Budgeting at the Ward Development Committee (WDC) Level,” said that there is an urgent need for the review of the National Primary Health Care Development Board (NPHCDB) policy on 40 per cent women composition.
In addition to this, he believed that there is also a need for inclusive representation and participation of marginalised groups in the WDC in order to achieve improved maternal health outcomes in the country, stressing that “this will assist in the attainment of universal health coverage.”
However, in his presentation at the capacity-building workshop, Mallam Abubakar Musa, also of the State Health Agency, called for more funding for the primary healthcare centres in the country for effective healthcare delivery, stressing that inadequate funding remains one of the challenges facing healthcare facilities, especially at the primary healthcare levels.
In his presentation, “Financial Management Oversight for WDCs,” Musa said that managing the finances of the PHCs is very crucial to the development of healthcare in the country, adding that while budgetary provisions for primary healthcare centres in the country remain inadequate, the little funds being released are often mismanaged.
Participants at the workshop unanimously agreed that the basic healthcare funds from the federal government in most cases ended up in private pockets, arguing that this is why universal health coverage has remained unrealistic in the country.
They called for more funding for healthcare centres in the country, saying that “the Abuja Health Declaration of 10 per cent annual budget for healthcare by states’ governments has not been achieved.”
The Niger State Coordinator of the Federation of Muslim Women’s Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN), the organisers of the workshop, Hajiya Kulu Abdullahi, urged all the participants at the workshop to put into use the knowledge gained during the two-day capacity-building workshop for the improvement of primary healthcare centres in the state.