USAID’s IHP Urges Bauchi Govt to Support Family Planning

Segun Awofadeji in  Bauchi 

The Integrated Health Program (IHP) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded program has called on the Bauchi state government to make resources available in its budget line for financing of family planning in 2024.

The IHP Health Financing Advisor, Khalid Kasimu, made the call at a one-day media quarterly meeting organised by journalists for Public Health and Development Initiative (J4PD) in collaboration with IHP, held in Bauchi.

Speaking on Health Financing outlook 2024 and support to Bauchi State, Kasimu, said the aim of the health financing outlook for 2024, was to ensure that substantial number of the population of the state get registered in any of the Health Insurance Scheme so that people could have access to healthcare services, thereby reducing out pocket expenditures.

He said currently the federal government is the sole supplier of family planning commodities which is distributed to states, but because of the high demand, the availability of the resources from the federal government was not going to be enough.

He added that the Federal Ministry of Health has rolled out a blueprint where states could start their own financing where the demand was high.

According to him, “We want to look at commodity financing, we want the government to increase seed stock for commodity expansion so that our health facilities will be equipped with drugs as government is already implementing supply chain commodity reform in the state where the drug management agency is responsible for the availability and distribution of commodities to health facilities across the state.

“In the area of nutrition, we want the government to also make available resources available for the provision of the sole commodity which is the ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) for cases of acute malnutrition.

“We know that USAID has supported the state with 17,000 cartons of the commodity, but we want government to continue to make this commodity available by making significant investments into the availability of RUTF.

“We want to see more finances going into service delivery points which will be used for upgrade of facility infrastructures, electricity and water supply at health facilities.

“We will also continue to advocate for more funding to go to the area of Human Resource for Health. Although government has made tremendous effort in employing more health workers in the state, however because of lack of adequate incentive packages to attract medical workers into the state, it has resulted to inadequate Human resource for health,” he said. 

Speaking earlier, the State Coordinator of J4PD, Elizabeth Kah, encouraged journalists to develop interest in reporting health issues in the state, saying it was their social corporate responsibility to the society.