The Government of Nigeria is focused on reducing maternal and child mortality through the reorientation and expansion of its primary health care driven by the Nigeria’s Health Sector Investment Renewal Plan. The 7th Annual Health Financing Forum in Washington organized by the World Bank, Global Facility Financing (GFF) and USAID was an exciting and action-packed 3-day conference which took place between April 15 – 17,2024. Health financing experts and other stakeholders from several countries converged to discuss health investment in the post-COVID era.

An important session titled ”Nigeria’s Health Sector Reform Vision to Crash Maternal & Child Mortality” was organized as a side event at the forum, dedicated to x-ray the policy reform efforts towards improving health outcomes in Nigeria. The side event featured key health sector experts which include Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare; Dr Muyi Aina, Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA); Dr Tomi Coker, Honourable Commissioner for Health Ogun State; Dr Gafar Alawode Co-convener, Nigeria UHC Forum; USAID, World Bank, Global Financing Facility amongst others.

The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, set the stage with an overview of the sector’s policy direction, which was followed by a panel discussion with contributions from panelists. During the panel session, Dr Gafar Alawode (Co-convener, Nigeria UHC Forum) expounded on the role of non-state actors in promoting the government health policy agenda. He further emphasized the need to engage the non-state actors in the entire health sector transformation value chain, i.e., from health policy design and implementation phase. He also used the opportunity to highlight the activity of the Nigeria UHC Forum in the areas of policy scrutiny, accountability and advocacy.

The Nigeria’s Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative offers promising opportunity to improve the country’s health outcomes at scale by investing in health while improving efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring resource coordination and alignment, and enhancing transparency and accountability by putting equity at the center to ensure no-one is left behind.

‘’DGI Consult is a founding member organization and the secretariat of the Nigeria UHC Forum, a coalition of a wide array of stakeholders working towards raising the political prioritisation of universal health coverage in Nigeria’’