By Hassan Zaggi
The Executive Director of KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Mustapha Gidado, has advocated for a dedicated budget line for capacity building on leadership and management of Tuberculosis (TB) in Nigeria.
He stated this at the Prof. Loveth Lawson memorial lecture at Bingham University in Nasarawa State, yesterday.
He argued that there are huge competencies in TB as a disease, but that there is a gap in leading people to manage the disease.
Gidado insisted policies, guidelines, plans and technologies cannot solve the TB problem without an effective leadership and capacity for individuals to do the work.
“We must invest in capacity building to those that need it most.
“Today we are asking people to do work that they are not capable or empowered. TB work is beyond the skill of knowing the TB.
“If we must succeed in ending TB, partners and government must invest in capacity building and I even recommend assigning a budget line for capacity building on leadership and management and not on the disease. “We are competent in the disease but we are not competent in leading people to manage it. We should have a budget line that is dedicated on capacity building.
“We should intentionally decentralize the skill and the capacity in line with the disease burden.”
The expert further called for the need to address leadership and partnership competencies at the lower level.
“We should revisit the function, the role and the job description of the people who are doing management function in the TB programme from the Central to the State and to the local governments
“The local government supervisors in TB programme were inherited from the old programme on leprosy. We have inadequate capacity of those individuals.
“We must embrace the role of multi-sectoral approach in doing our work. It means challenging the status quo. We alone as professionals in TB cannot solve the TB problem. Unless we reach out to other stakeholders to align with them”
Gidado further called the aligning of the TB intervention and services with the current opportunities.
He stressed that: “There are a lot of opportunities under the Universal Health Coverage (UHC), there are a lot of opportunities in the revitalization of the PHC, there are lot of opportunities in health insurance. Why is TB not among the diseases that are covered by the health insurance in Nigeria? ”
He, therefore, called for deliberate effort to fight TB to a stand-still, noting that: ‘We can collectively sustain and build a broad legacy by walking the talk which was what Prof Loveth Lawson stood for all his life time and also intentional development of leaders within us.
“Prof. was a mirror in effective leadership and partnership, all we need was to be in touch and contact with Prof. He was a mirror and a model of leadership.”
Responding to questions from journalists, the wife of Late Prof. Lawon, Dr. J.O Lawson, said that the family was doing everything possible to sustain the legacy he left.
According to her, Late Lawson, all his life believed that integrity was key to everything.
“The main thing about him was integrity. He believes so much in integrity. He always emphasis that a good name is better than wealth and any other thing.
“He believes that if you have integrity, you will make the right decisions. He loved people without bias,” she said.
In an effort to sustain the legacy of the late Lawson, the wife said: “He left us about 17 months or so now, during this period, we’ve been able to do a few things. We have set up a molecular laboratory, we have done some programmes to immotalise him. This is one of them and we continue to strive for excellence at Zankli medical centre and we also work with Zankli Research laboratory to make sure that the work goes on.
“In the years ahead, I am expecting that the work he did will live on and continue to impact positively and people will continue to remember him for good.”
