The Minister of National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma has said it would see to the allocation of more funds to the health sector so as to ensure improved child health and nutrition. The Minister who stated this during an advocacy meeting with the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health (PACFAH) maintained that he could not commit to raising the funds in the health sector to 15 percent as stipulated in the Abuja declaration.

He said, “You will understand that the country is going through difficult economic times and is trying to restructure the economy and ensures that it diversifies the revenue base and the revenue up adding large proportion of the budget on infrastructure”. Continuing, “It is through the infrastructure that we are able to get growth, improve agriculture, manufacturing, solid minerals and all the other things that could be used to grow the economy and when we get the resources it can be used to invest in health. We have to invest in infrastructure that would turn this economy around.”

While pledging the administration’s support towards vaccination to ensure that children are immunized, he said there was a strong commitment by the present administration to raising the funds appropriated to the sector. He urged PACFAH to liaise with the Ministry of health as the ministry would be at the fore front and most of the support would be given to the Ministry of health as the parent ministry, to determine the priority and how best to achieve the objectives of the administration.

The minister however commended them for the advocacy, maintaining that the government alone couldn’t improve the health sector, as it needs commitment from the private sector, NGOs and other stakeholders. Earlier in their presentation, the Program Director Strategy of PACFAH, Remi Adeseun, pointed out that the government needs to scale up funding in the sector to reduce Maternal and Infant mortality rate in the country.

Disclosing that 400,000 Children die annually from pneumonia, he urged the government to increase allocation to15percent as against the 4.13percent as stipulated in the Abuja declaration. He said if the country gets health financing right it would be able to achieve the Universal Health Coverage, adding it would ensure that all Nigerians have access to all the healthcare needed without going through financial hardship.

Lamenting that 50-70 percent of healthcare is financed by international donors and data have shown that any country where out of pocket expenses is more than 20 percent there would be poverty, poor health outcomes and there would be poor results and that is where Nigeria is presently. Adeseun urged the government to meet its primary responsibility of securing the health of the people, increase domestic financing for the sector, ensuring that it is efficient, sufficient, equitable and sustainable.