Kogi State government, in partnership with United Nation Children Fund (UNICEF), has facilitated a review of the 2023 Annual Operational Plan (AOP) for the state Ministry of Health following which a new one has been developed for 2024.

This is aimed at repositioning the health sector in the state to deliver positive outcomes and change the narratives of negative indicators.

The state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Usman Zakari, who spoke recently in Abuja, during a two-day workshop on the Review of 2023 Annual Operational Plan and the development of the 2024 Annual Operational Plan from the Kogi State Strategic Health Development II, underscored the importance of the exercise, saying, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

“If you don’t have these plans on ground, you can actually meet targets without knowing it, and you may not even meet targets without knowing it.”

One of the reasons it is important to have a plan he observed, is to make decisive and deliberate efforts towards meeting them and to be strategic on all the items in the plan.

“If you noticed, almost the entire Ministry of Health is here. The reason we didn’t allow them to do this around the office is other exigencies around the office that will cause a lot of distractions. We have drastically reduced the level of activities in the Ministry of Health and brought them here to Abuja so that we can all contribute to developing this all-important document which will show us strategic direction on how to move forward,” he said.