Presidential New Year gift to health sector

My phone was inundated all day on Tuesday, December 22, 2015, with the same question from majority of the callers. “What is your take on President Buhari’s budget presentation to the joint session of the National Assembly as it relates to the health sector?” they asked. I jokingly told one of the reporters that “the […]

My phone was inundated all day on Tuesday, December 22, 2015, with the same question from majority of the callers. “What is your take on President Buhari’s budget presentation to the joint session of the National Assembly as it relates to the health sector?” they asked.
I jokingly told one of the reporters that “the health sector in 2016 will be the Oliver Twist begging for money from international partners and donors to finance many aspects of critical areas.’’
“We will devote a significant portion of our recurrent expenditure to institutions that provide critical government services. We will spend N369.6 billion on education; N294.5 billion on defense; N221.7 billion on health and N145.3 billion on the Ministry of Interior. This will ensure that our teachers, armed forces personnel, doctors, nurses, policemen, fire fighters, prison service officers and many more critical service providers are paid competitively and on time,” PMB said.
The health sector budget is about 3.7 per cent of the overall budget, which is the lowest in the last 16 years and far from the 15 per cent target as proposed by the Abuja declaration. It is also far from the minimum standard in line with international benchmarks of health budget to Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) and per capital spending.
What begs for question is how President Buhari would finance all the interventions proposed in his Transition Committee report, as well as all he committed to do to the international community. We have to put the interventions and the available funds in a weighing scale and answer the hard question: Did the government demonstrate commitment for the health sector in 2016?
In the Transition Committee report under the submission of the Social Issues Sub Committee, a priority is proposed to support the implementation of the National Health Act. It proposed what needed to be done by the government of President Buhari as follows:  set up and operationalise the basic health care provision fund and the devolution of primary and secondary health care facilities at all levels of government and the private sector, create governance structure for the basic health care provision fund, with a view to implementing leading standards of accountability and consistent performance reporting on the use and impact of the fund.
 
But at this juncture, the question PMB and his budget team needs to answer is: “Do we have funds in the 2016 budget for this?” Going by the event of 2015, we are not optimistic. This is so because even ordinary meetings on issues related to the National Health Act were sponsored by international partners. The government had zero budget for that this year.
Another section of the transition report recommended prioritisation of “Effective Private Sector Investment.’’ It recommended that the new government should enhance private sector participation in the health sector via an intervention fund. The Indian medical system, which was jumpstarted by similar government assistance, was cited as an example. “Do we have funds in the 2016 budget for this?”
President Buhari was all over the place during the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 2015. The launch of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s, and Adolescents 2.0, covering 2016 -2020, which  built on new evidence, including the need to focus on critical population groups such as newborns and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), were launched, with all heads of states committing to align their budgets and plans with such. “Do we have funds in the 2016 budget for this?”
Nigeria was unable to co-finance its 2015 vaccine procurement; the World Bank had to bail out the country with a soft loan. We were unable to procure reproductive health and family planning commodities in line with the FP2020 London Summit Commitment. International development partners are helping us out with that. Our counterpart funding for the Global Fund to finance HIV, tuberculosis and malaria wasn’t paid this year. Are we expecting these to be funded in the 2016 budget? These questions beg for responses.
When I told the reporter that the health sector in 2016 would beg for money from international partners and donors, I said that with heavy heart and eyes because President Buhari and his health team are yet to grasp our health problems.
All comments to Dr Aminu Magashi, publisher of Health Reporters ([email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>)