The Coalition also faulted the scrapping of the midwifery scheme by the Federal government, saying this has led to high rate of maternal mortality in the country.
Chairman of the Coalition of Maternal, New Born, Child and Adolescent Health Accountability Mechanism in Nigeria (C4MAN), Dr Ejike Oji, spoke on Tuesday in Abuja during the Coalition’s General Assembly. The key objective of C4MAN is translating funding into service delivery.
He said the delay in assenting to the budget to become law would adversely affect the good plans President Muhammadu Bulgari administration has for the country.
Oji, while lamenting that the health sector would be worst affected by this delay in signing the budget half year into 2017, noted that some of the major commodities like purchase of vaccines for vaccination, commodities for family and other consumables used by tertiary institutions would pose serious challenge for the nation.
He said: “You have to pay money well in advance for those commodities. In Nigeria, we are not paying for all the vaccines we are getting into the country because of a lot of support from international organisations.
“There is a coalition called GAVI that is supporting Nigeria heavily and by the year 2023 it will completely exit and Nigeria will need about N620 million dollars to buy vaccines every year.
“What we are budgeting is so small compared to that amount that we are getting as support happily from international organisations. The little amount we are budgeting, let it be released as at when needed.
“There are a lot of capital projects, buildings to house doctors, nurses and clinics. All these capital projects cannot go on if the budget is not released.
“Money for therapeutic nutrition is in the budget. A lot of Nigerians are malnourished, especially in the north and if money does not come on time, it will affect those children permanently,” he said.
Dr Oji, therefore, appealed to the Federal government to try as much as possible to assent to the bill for it to become law so that state actors including Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) could use the money for the common good of Nigerians.
On scrapping of midwifery, he said the state governments that were supposed to provide counterpart support for the scheme had failed to live up to expectation based on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with the ministry of health.
He, however, insisted that the fact that states were unable to meet up with their obligation was not enough justification for scrapping of such laudable scheme that had contributed immensely to saving the lives of women and children in the country.
He revealed that when the midwifery scheme was introduced, Nigeria had maternal mortality of about 1000 to 100,000 life births.
“Five years after it was introduced maternal mortality dropped to about 400 to 100,000 life births. You can see the direct correlation of the outcome of midwifery services.
“When we started wobbling and tumbling, and the midwiferies started learning the service, what happened? Maternal mortality is now about 570 and it is still climbing.
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