Niger Assembly advocates Budget increment in health sector

Niger State House of Assembly, has advocated for budget increment for the health sector, in order to effectively tackle health challenges affecting citizens of the state in recent times.

The House also restated its commitment to sensitise the state government on challenges confronting child and family health, as well as, build consensus on innovations for the state health services.

These issues came to the fore at a two-day Legislative Advocacy Retreat on Child and Family Health in the state, organised by its Ministry of Health, in conjunction with Civil Society Scaling up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN), and Community Health and Research Initiative (CHR), held in Ikeja, Lagos.

Speaker of the House, Ahmed Marafa Gumi, said the legislative arm of government in the state encourages the state to increase budgetary allocation to the health sector from 2017 budget to subsequent years, with the intention of reaching and surpassing the 2001 Abuja declaration of 15 per cent of budget allocation to the health sector by 2019.

He said the House would focus attention on major challenges facing sector such as inadequate funding, untimely release of funds extremely weak supervision/monitoring and evaluation.

Gumi said: “There is need for additional funding and support for child and family health to enable Niger state achieve the Abuja 2001 African Union (AU) declaration of 15 per cent budget provision for health sector. There is need to fill in the human resource gap, recruitment of more health professionals. There should be engagement between the legislators and executive to aid timely release of funds.”