Bello promises to sign bill to revolutionise health care delivery

Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello has stated that in his effort to revolutionalise the Primary Health Care (PHC) delivery in the state, he would soon assent to the amendment to the Primary Health Care Under One Roof (PHCUOR) Bill, which would reform the agency against the usual multiple administrative frameworks.

The existence of multiple administrative frameworks, with overlapping responsibilities, cutting across various ministries and parastatals, has been counterproductive in the primary health care level, leading to less than satisfactory outcomes

The governor, who spoke yesterday at the flag-off of the second round of this year’s Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Week (MNCHW) Week at the Government House, Lokoja, promised to inaugurate the committee that would implement PHCUOR to ensure smooth transition between the agency and the ministries and parastatals involved to streamline all its activities under one authority.

Executive Director of the state Primary Healthcare Care Development Agency, Dr. Abubakar Yakubu, said in spite of the remarkable progress made in the primary healthcare care development in the country, the system has remained weak and the health outcomes suboptimal.

This, he said, was due to multiple challenges in various aspects of the health system framework, adding that the PHC, under one roof, is based on clearly defined principles, which needed to be translated into practice through the existence of structures and managerial processes.

Yakubu explained that it was in that regard that the PHC Board, in partnership with key stakeholders, decided to introduce the PHCUOR initiative as part of new governance reform aimed at improving primary health care in the state.