The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, has revealed that the much awaited reforms and guidelines to operationalize the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) would soon be ready.
At the Presidential Task Force (PTF) media briefing in Abuja, on Thursday, the Minister noted that the guidelines would be made public after presentation to stakeholders.
“I can say that errors have been addressed and the new document vastly improves on the earlier version,” the Ehanire said.
BHCPF is a key component of the National Health Act; 2014, which aims to extend Primary Health Care (PHC) to all Nigerians by substantially increasing the level of financial resources to PHC services.
The Act provides that at least, 1% of the federal consolidated revenue should be allocated to BHCPF.
However, the implementation of the Fund was put on hold due to some errors which Ehanire said have been corrected and the new version will soon be released.
Commenting on the effort of the Federal Government to meet the demands of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), who, on May 30, issued a 14-day ultimatum, the Minister said that the federal government has taken some steps to resolve the issues.
It would be recalled that at the end of its year 2020 Annual General Meeting, NARD in a communique warned that it would embark on indefinite strike if the government fail to meet its demands after 14 days.
The National President of NARD, Sokomba Aliyu, who read the communique, decried the poor treatment and harassment of medical doctors in the cause of performing their duties.
On COVID-19, the Minister revealed that his ministry had since commence plan “for targeted community sensitization activities in 20 high burden local government areas and workshop in Infection Prevention and Control on COVID-19 for healthcare workers of Public and Private Hospitals in the FCT.”
He further noted that his ministry through the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has activated additional laboratories in Akwa Ibom, Jigawa and Oyo States bringing the total number of laboratories in the network to 33.
He revealed that “more are being prepared as we work towards a target of at least one molecular laboratory per state. Optimization of laboratories is ongoing in other States.”
