Prof. Chinedum-Peace Babalola, the Vice Chancellor of Chrisland University, Abeokuta has called on the government to ensure it allocates adequate budget for the health sector in the 2020 fiscal year.
Babalola, who is also a phamacist said on Saturday in Abuja that adequate budget would enable the sector perform optimally and achieve the desire goals.
“The budget allocation to the health sector has never been enough; we have not met the minimum standard of healthcare specified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and that is because we don’t have enough finance to do all things.
“We need to increase the budget towards health, there is this national health act that prescribed that one per cent of the revenue from tax should go for the health sector, if that is implemented, a lot will happen.
“We need policies, we need support to be able to implement various health programmes, if the budget is increased, there will be enough money to curb diseases in the country, ” she stressed.
The Acting Executive Secretary of the FCT Primary Healthcare Board, Dr Ewot Ndaeyo, also called for increase in the budget for the health sector.
Ndaeyo pointed out that the budget increase would make a way for the desire result in the primary healthcare and it would affect the lives of Nigerians positively.
According to him, what the board expected for the 2019 statutory allocation is not what it got and there is no way improvement will come to the sector with inadequate budget provisions.
“The challenges that we have is in the budget, we expect to have higher than what we got for the 2019 for the statutory allocation, the 2019 health provision funds was below our expectation.
“If you don’t achieve this one, there is no way you can move primary healthcare forwards. This is the minimum package and we have done a memo to the FCTA to come in for assistance,” he said.
Ndaeyo, however, appreciated the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration for signing into law the act that would regulate the workings of the FCT Primary Healthcare.
“For the past 20 years, the FCT Primary Healthcare has been operating without a law and this does not give a sense of direction to the board.”
He said that now that the board had been gazetted for the FCT primary healthcare, things were bound to change for good.
“The FCT healthcare has been gazetted and it was assented to by the president on June 24, and gazetted in July 18, this will make the primary healthcare to come under a roof.
“The routine activities that are being done by the six area councils will now be harmonised and we will be doing it from the headquarters here, it is going to be in uniformity.
“There will be one coordination, one plan and one authority, there will be no primary healthcare functions in any other place except through the primary healthcare board, this is a significant development,” he stressed.
