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The Federal Government has recorded progress across all 41 presidential health sector commitments, with maternal case fatality in Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) facilities declining by 60 per cent between 2024 and 2026.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, disclosed this yesterday at the Third Nigeria Health Sector Joint Annual Review (JAR) in Abuja, marking three years of the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative (NHSRII).
Pate attributed the gains to the administration’s health sector reforms under the Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp), which aligns federal and state governments and development partners under a common implementation framework.
He said 3,526 primary healthcare centres had been revitalised, while work was ongoing in another 900. The government had also recruited 19,758 skilled birth attendants across 22 states, engaged 4,747 community health workers in 10 states and trained 78,054 frontline health workers.
Under the Maternal and Neonatal Mortality Reduction Innovation Initiative (MAMII), 750,000 pregnant women had been linked to functional health facilities, while emergency transport services had conveyed 104,566 women and newborns.
On financial protection, the minister said health insurance coverage had risen from about 16 million to nearly 24 million Nigerians within three years. He added that 5,106 patients had benefited from reduced dialysis costs, alongside subsidies for selected cancer medicines and free emergency care within 48 hours across 507 facilities.
Pate also disclosed that 10 pharmaceutical factories and manufacturing lines had been commissioned, supported by N24 billion in tax waivers, 12 technology-transfer agreements and a prospective investment pipeline exceeding $5 billion.
However, he acknowledged persistent challenges in healthcare affordability, quality of care and equitable access, despite improvements in national health security demonstrated by Nigeria’s response to the imported Ebola case.
Also, Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Salako, described 2027 as critical to consolidating the reforms, urging stakeholders to translate the review’s findings into actionable resolutions with clear responsibilities and timelines.
Earlier, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Daju Kachollom, said JAR had been completed across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, describing the exercise as an important accountability platform for assessing progress and addressing implementation gaps.
Presenting the three-year assessment, the National Coordinator of the SWAp Coordination Office, Dr. Muntaqa Sadiq, said N249.5 billion had been disbursed through BHCPF gateways under the current administration as of October 2026, compared with less than N80 billion in the Fund’s preceding 10 years.
He said the 60 per cent reduction in maternal case fatality had surpassed the initial 30 per cent target, while deaths from obstetric emergencies fell by 22 per cent in participating facilities.
Findings from the 2026 Mini-Demographic and Health Survey also showed that skilled birth attendance was improving 11 times faster, while postnatal checks were increasing seven times faster.
Sadiq added that free maternal, newborn and fistula programmes had reached nearly 100,000 beneficiaries in two years, including 80,906 recipients of emergency obstetric care and 6,059 fistula patients.
He further disclosed that three of six planned cancer centres in Enugu, Benin and Katsina, as well as 10 diagnostic and specialist centres, were operational. More than 500 infrastructure and equipment projects had also been completed across 60 federal tertiary hospitals.
He called for increased domestic health financing, improved health workforce capacity and expanded interventions in underserved communities to sustain the gains.
