The Federal Government has earmarked the sum of N260 billion to revitalise Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) across the country.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate, disclosed this on Friday in Abuja while giving account of his stewardship at the Ministerial Sectoral Briefings on the performance of President Bola Tinubu’s administration in the last one year.
According to him, the revitalisation is in line with the president’s directive and the fund is currently available at the state levels through International Development Association (IDA) financing and the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF).
“We are now providing guidelines to assist the states in the implementation of the revitalisation projects, ensuring that the resources are used prudently for their intended purposes,”he added
Pate also said that 1,400 PHCs were now able to provide skilled birth attendance, funded through the BHCPF.
He added that the first tranche of N35 million had been disbursed through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to 8,300 facilities.
The minister also said that a condition was put forward to the states that would access it.
He added that they must comply with the fiduciary guidelines that would be provided which were in response to lapses that have been observed over the years.
“Thirty-three states have received those funds and the rest of the states are just about to complete and receive their own financing to channel through the PHCs.”
He disclosed that a plan was outlined through NPHCDA in collaboration with the States, to revive 8,300 PHCs across the nation to make them fully functional and to expand and upgrade to 17,000 PHCs over the next three years.
“The expansion is to refurbish the centres, equip them and make them fully functional to deliver essential services.
“To deliver essential services such as immunisation, reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health services, treatment of non-communicable diseases, and to facilitate referrals to secondary facilities.’’
On workforce, he said that more than 2,400 health workers, doctors, nurses, midwives were recruited in facilities with many of them in rural areas to provide essential services to Nigerians.
According to him, the issue of health workforce has been a topical one and the Federal Government had doubled the enrolment quota of medical schools, nursing schools and other health conventional schools from 28,000 a year to 64,000 a year.
“That is just the first step, the education sector and the schools will have a role too to play to improve the infrastructure and the training tools to produce more health workforce.
