Lara Adejoro
The Federal Government says it has set aside N260bn for the revitalisation of the Primary Healthcare Centres across the country.
This was disclosed by the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof Muhammad Pate on Friday in Abuja at the sectoral ministerial press briefing to mark the first anniversary of President Bola Tinubu in office.
He explained that plans were underway to expand the PHCs from 8,300 to 17,000 through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency and make them functional to deliver essential services.
He said, “I’m very pleased to say that there is N260 billion sitting right now at the states’ level. All the states of the federation have been mobilised for the revitalisation of the PHCs. This is a resource that is from the International Development Association, either, and from the Basic HealthCare Provision Fund because when we said we’re going to revitalise our PHCs, the key to doing that is the resources to be available.
“So a lot of the effort that has been going on over the last several months is to mobilise the resources to be able to deploy and the states have this N260bn in their pockets available.”
Pate noted that the government would provide the states with guidelines for the implementation of the revitalisation and equipment of medical facilities.
He stated, “Before this administration, we had looked at the previous years’ audits of how some of these resources were being utilised, and we realised that there were major gaps in several states, and we addressed it through the National Economic Council through the governor’s forum.
“I want to call out our state governors they leaned in because they saw the direction that the President has laid out through the Health Sector Renewal Initiative and the compact that they signed, and they acted to ensure that we remedy so that the resources would go to intended purposes.”
The minister further said the government would begin the training of 120,000 frontline health workers for three years.
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