Gombe Set to Domesticate National Health Act

Segun Awofadeji

A draft bill for the domestication of the National Health Act in Gombe State is set for presentation to the Gombe State Governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo who is expected to forward it to the Gombe State House of Assembly.

The draft bill is known as “A law to provide for the regulation, development and management of Gombe State health system and for other matters connected therewith, 2017”.

The Chairman for the sub-committee for the State Technical Working Group on the National Health Act, Dr. James Mahdi, stated this to newsmen shortly after a validation meeting of the committee in Gombe Yesterday .

He said the committee drafted the bill out of the National Health Act of Nigeria and that it must go through the State House of Assembly before an executive assent just the same way the National Health Act went at the national level before being passed into law during the administration of Goodluck Jonathan.

“The Act is needed to be domiciled in the thirty six states of Nigeria. Gombe and Lagos States are taking the lead in this domestication and what we have done in the committee is to draft a bill out of the national Act of Nigeria. It is now a Gombe State Health System Bill which must go through the processes that it went at the national level to be passed in to law”, Dr James stated.

He added that, “We are now at the stage where by the draft bill has under gone so many processes, all stake holders have been sensitized about it and all inputs are been brought in in-view of peculiarities to the culture and traditions of the people of the state so that we can now have a health system that is workable within the national health act of Nigeria at Gombe state, finally as an act in Gombe state health system”.

He explains further that the act is achievable because it has now defined the role and functions of all tiers of government at the primary health care as well as the state level and the federal level in view of primary, secondary and tertiary health care. It also revealed the roles of all health workers.

Dr. Mahdi said, the act equally tells about linkages within the system stressing that, “a health personnel refer cases that are beyond his capacity to the next capacity and to the highest capacity as the case might be, I’m sure it is going to be workable and implemented with the support of the people of Gombe state.”