By; Mohammed Kawu, Bauchi
Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare Professor Muhammad Ali Pate has revealed that there are now 8, 800 functional healthcare facilities across the country that are being reached on regular basis with quarterly disbursement of resources through the basic healthcare provision fund.
The Minister said that the federal government has now doubled the quarterly resource disbursement to those healthcare facilities which are scattered across the 774 local government areas of the Nigerian communities.
Professor Ali Pate who did not disclosed the actual amount of money being disbursed to those health facilities, was speaking at the Northern Traditional Leaders Committee (NTLC) 3rd and 4th quarterly meeting held in Bauchi.
Pate further stated that training and retraining of health workers across the various health facilities of the federal government has been in remarkable progress with 52, 000 already trained among whom are those from Bauchi state.
The Minister explained that these commitments were in addition to the revitalization of 4,000 Primary Healthcare Centres across Nigeria, as well as the provision of free emergency obstric services to women to curb maternal mortality during deliveries.
“Health and Education goes hand-in-hand. The mothers who are not educated are the ones likely to miss ante-natal care and died when they come to deliver. They are likely the ones to have children who have missed vaccination”.
Pate, who also took cognisance of the importance of education, recalled the government’s launch of the first-ever programme in the country tagged “Human Capital Opportunities for Prosperity and Equity (HOPE) to which a whooping sum of $700 million was raised.
Minister Ali Pate stressed the need for forging respectful partnership across the country with determined efforts to uplift the living standard of the people generally which, he said, President Tinubu is working diligently along with members of his team to actualized.
He further explained that traditional leaders are the fastest channels who constitute 160, 000 in number in Northern Nigeria, saying “There is no square meter that is not governed by a traditional rulers, as also there is no place of worship that doesn’t have a leader who administers the population”.
Pate therefore urged Nigerians to exercise patience as, according to him, the derivable benefits of the different reforms that were put in place would take a little time before they acrue.
Speaking earlier, His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto, Alh. Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar 111, recalled that it was second time the Bauchi state government is hosting the NTLC meeting in 15 years, having the committee established in 2009, midwived by the incumbent minister of health, Prof. Ali Pate when he was the Executive Secretary of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA).
Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar who is the NTLC patron, thanked Development Partners, especially Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that has been with the committee right from the day it started and has not fall back or stop assisting it in making sure the committee lived up to it’s expectation.
He also commended the Aliko Dangote Foundation which later came on board with support, as well as the WHO, UNICEF, and Rotary International, among others, saying “We appreciated your contributions to the working of this body, we can’t do it alone. We also appreciated the support of Northern State Governors, and we believe, we will continue to do the best we can”.
The Sultan similarly commended the NTLC members for their cooperation and support, assuring that they would continue to work for Nigerians and people of the North healthwise, saying “We want assure you that your sacrifices would not go in vein, because we are going to have a healthy society, for a healthy society is a developed society”.
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