COMMISSIONER for Health in Gombe state, Dr. Ishaya Kennedy has attributed the poor funding of his Ministry to the security challenges that have devasted the North-East region in the past few years.
The Commissioner who was reacting to an advocacy campaign by the Gombe State Accountability Mechanism (GoSAM) stressed the importance of accessing and timely release of funds in the 2018 budget for the health sector in the State to be able to function effectively.
According to the Commissioner, the State Government had so many expectations and even made a good budget for various organs in the health sector but that the security challenges facing the region have prevented Government from achieving it set targets.
Ishaya Kennedy who wondered how many people access health services in the State because of the humanitarian crises in the region said the ministry had mapped out days for its personnel to go out to see the attendance of people in its health facilities.
He also revealed that the Ministry is working on a plan for the training of all directors of the ministry as well as introduce paramedics for women. He said it is hoped that at the end of the day, everybody will be aware that a provider has been trained in such communities so that people will patronize the facility.
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Speaking earlier, Chairman of the Advocacy sub-committee, Hajiya Zariyatu Abubakar Hashidu who was represented by the Secretary, Rev. George Agun, commended the ministry for honouring its submissions captured in the 2018 budget based on its findings from the MNH scorecard, MPDSR and health budget scorecard.
It, however, decried the negligible attention over the inadequacy of budgetary provisions and irregular release of budgeted funds for the health sector which in turn, lead to poor performance of the State’s health.
Some of the submissions made that were captured in the 2018 budget included creating a budget line for the provision of solar panel to power blood banks in all facilities in the State, increase allocation on Maternal Child Health from N500,000 in 2017 to N15,000,000.00 in 2018 budget, increase allocation for health management information system (HMIS) from three million naira in 2017 to ten million naira in the 2018 budget.
Other submissions captured in the 2018 budget and waiting for release of funds include, allocation of budget cost of twenty million naira to procure seed essential drugs for the drugs revolving funds in the 2018 budget for the Gombe State Primary Health Care Development Agency, creation of budget line and provision for the sustainability of MPDSR and creation of budget line for the operationalization of the State Health Account.
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