By Hassan Zaggi
The Country Director of Results for Development (R4D), Nigeria, Dr. Hope Uweja, has reiterated the commitment of his organisation to the improvement of health budget process in Nigeria by preparing the federal ministry of health to take bigger role to ensure that all Nigerians have access to the health they deserve.
He disclosed this at the High-Level Sustainability meeting facilitated by the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) Planning and Budgeting Committee to discuss the gains and way forward for health budget processes in Nigeria.
Dr. Uweja said that his NGO is into efforts to improve budget process but importantly “we are preparing the Federal Ministry of Health to be able to take a bigger role to ensure all Nigerians have access to the health that they deserve.”
He emphasised the need to improve an alignment between health expenditure and budgeting in Nigeria for national health priority and policy.
“What you have seen today is to what extent has this programme succeeded in improving the expenditure for healthcare and provide better value for money in terms of money invested for health in the country,” Dr. Uweja explained.
One of the key gains of the programme, according to him, “is that it has prepared the federal ministry of health to improve the alignment of health expenditure and budgeting in the country to the extent of national health priority and policy.
“You now see a situation where more expenditure is going into areas that will be able to give better value for money being spent for health both in terms of improving financing for primary health care and also targeting areas where expenditure for health is mostly needed, particularly for the vulnerable group, maternal and child health and other areas that have been calling for attention in the past years.”
Speaking, Elisha Benjamin of the Federal Ministry of Health, recalled that since 2018, R4D3/Sydani has been providing technical assistance to the health ministry budget process reforms to make federal-level healthcare budgets more strategic
He further noted that with the R4D3/Sydani support, the federal ministry of health has instituted a collaboration mechanism between the DHPRS1 and DFA in developing strategic healthcare budgets, developed and submitted annual strategic health budgets with at least 80% informed by annual operational plans drawn from national health sector strategic priorities and develop an intermediate budget performance monitoring framework that tracks financial investments against health outcomes among others
Over the past 3 years, he noted, the health ministry with R4D/Sydani support, recorded improvements in the formulation and monitoring phases of the budget process
