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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) has suggested a better and more realistic way to finance Primary Health Care (PHC) system in Nigeria in order to achieve the desired goals.
Chairman of the Forum, Kayode Fayemi, in his keynote address at an inaugural event organized by the Nigerian Health Commissioners’ Forum on financing PHCs in Nigeria, on Wednesday, reaffirmed that equitable access to PHC services was key to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG3) and Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
He suggested: “To solve the problem of financing for PHCs and meet the demands for responsive system, we must approach PHC financing and service delivery with four key focuses in mind, namely, utilisation of the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF) to finance essential health services, especially for the vulnerable people and to improve capacity to address public health emergencies.
“We must consolidate funding for PHC services and essential public health functions. Also, we must increase budgetary allocations for healthcare both at the national and state levels, and explore innovative ways to pool funds for non-contributory healthcare coverage.”
He confirmed that some degrees of effort was already in place to achieve some of the focuses. “For instance, a good number of States have established State Health Insurance Schemes (SHIS) and have purchased explicit packages of health services for their citizens.
“We have also observed that states are also increasingly taking advantage of the BHCPF programme to expand access to PHC services. Health systems are, undoubtedly, driven by financing arrangements, and this includes the number of funds they receive, how these funds are distributed and utilised to provide equitable access to services.
“Health financing is a critical building block of the health system that directly affects the functionality of the overall system, and until we address the issue of poor funding for health and the fragmentation of the health financing arrangements in Nigeria, we will make little headway in our pursuit for UHC.
“It is a fact that the right to health is a fundamental human right. However, the ability of our country to guarantee this right for all Nigerians has been slow, largely due to how the health system is financed and delivered. This has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic which has exposed significant weaknesses in our health sector, especially the PHCs.”
He challenged the Health Commissioners’Forum and other stakeholders to ensure PHCs in Nigeria is financed sustainably to ensure risk protection, adequate infrastructure and human resources and the delivery of quality health services.”
Vice Chairman of the Health Commissioners’Forum, Muhammad Lawan Gana, in his remarks, explained that the Health Commissioners were worried about the poor state of the PHCs in Nigeria which could be linked to poor funding, hence the meeting to chart a new course for the financing of the PHCs.
He said that COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for standard and functional PHCs at the sub-national levels into spotlight. “PHCs are the most promising platform for providing basic essential health interventions and other public health functions, and widely recognised as key component of all high-performing health systems as well as an essential foundation of UHC.
Gana who is the Yobe State Commissioner for health recognized that in the last five years, government at all levels prioritized PHC services especially with the implementation of key provision of the 2014 National Health Act, the BHCPF.
“The implementation of BHCPF has catalyzed subnational government consciousness to PHC prioritization especially with the expansion of social health insurance using publicly funded schemes for the poor and vulnerable populations,” he added.
