By Hassan Zaggi
A consortium made up of Health Reform Foundation of Nigeria (HERFON), the Vaccine Network for Disease Control and GEMHUB Initiative, have called on the federal government to increase investment in health security.
The Programme Manager of HERFON, Dr. Opeyemi Adeosun, made the call at a one-day workshop organized at by HERFON and other members of the consortium, in Abuja, yesterday.
The workshop was to review the existing accountability framework on health security in Nigeria.
The workshop was also an avenue to bring diverse stakeholders in a round table to discuss and find solutions to some of the health security challenges in Nigeria.
Dr. Adeosun insisted that the federal government has its own roles in the effort to resolve health security related challenges in the country.
He noted that the federal government has no excuse, considering that it is the custodiam of tax payers’ money and also saddled with the responsibility of protecting the lives of citizens in the country.
According to him: “We need to ask the government the right questions, as Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), we need to create interest in health security.
“People are more familiar with Malaria, Tuberculosis (TB), diabetes, hypertension and others but beyond that, we have all learnt that health security is a serious issue.
“As citizens, we need improved knowledge on health security so as to know how to collaborate with government in achieving result.
“Government should be more sincere with resources handed over to them by Nigerian tax payers. The budget so far did not include health security, especially, the non-health MDAs. They do not seem to know the importance and for example, when there is flooding, the Ministry of Environment will be involved, Ministry of Agriculture will be involved, the National Orientation Agency will also be involved and many MDAs. Flooding could lead to outbreak of cholera or diphtheria. “
Similarly, the Head of Programme for Vaccine Network for Disease Control, Chika Nwankwo, reiterated that Nigeria needs health security in case of emergencies.
According to her: “As CSOs, we like accountability and transparency but without the tools what are you then checking. We want to hold duty bearers accountable, we want to know when you are giving, for example, five thousand naira, how much did you spend. If we don’t know they gave you that amount, how do we track it.
“We brought in CSO’s and representatives from Ministries, Departments, Agencies and the Media together because we want to know the existing templates that we can use to track them.
“Although some CSO’s have developed certain mechanisms and frameworks alike but we want everybody to bring their own let’s review and look at the indicators that you are tracking and merge with what we think should come in so we can have a robust result.”
