Category: Blog
ECONOMY AND HEALTH SECURITY NEXUS: LESSONS FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has launched the global community into a health crisis of an unanticipated magnitude, with far-reaching socio-economic consequences. The vulnerability of the Nigerian economy to global shocks and the country’s suboptimal level of preparedness and response to epidemics was exposed by the associated economic and health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.…
Basic Health Care Provision Fund: A Slow Start to a Long Journey
Signing the National Health Bill into an Act at the twilight of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in 2014 was greeted with euphoria largely because it paved the way for implementation of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF). The euphoria was understandable because the BHCPF was envisaged to play a pivotal role in transforming Nigeria’s unenviable…
Towards Nigeria’s End TB Quest: Can Strategic Purchasing be the Game Changer?
Nigeria’s Huge TB burden is largely attributable to the wide gap in financing TB activities articulated in the National TB Strategic Plan; in 2018, only a quarter of funds needed for TB implementation was mobilized. Domestic financing accounted for less than 10% of the annual budget for TB in Nigeria, which stood in sharp contrast…
Expanding Access to Health Care in Sub-Saharan Africa through Diaspora Remittances
Government spending on health in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) falls short of recommended benchmarks needed to make significant progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). As a case in point, Lesotho was the only SSA country that spent up to 5% of its GDP on health in 2018, while there was no country in the region that…
POLICY BRIEF: HEALTH SECURITY POLICY AND FINANCING IN NIGERIA
Introduction Monumental socio-economic devastation caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic brings to the fore the need to further engender and prioritize health security policy and funding globally and locally. The Nigeria Health Security landscape has witnessed considerable transformations in the last couple of years with significant investment in epidemic prevention, detection and treatment by the…
POLICY BRIEF: RAISING ACCOUNTABILITY BAR FOR HEALTH SECURITY FINANCING IN NIGERIA
Introduction The health security landscape in Nigeria has witnessed considerable transformations in the last couple of years with significant investment in epidemic prevention, detection and treatment by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). However, the public health infrastructure is still fraught with identifiable gaps, one of which is poor funding of health systems for…
Build Back Better Webinar Series
The Build Back Better webinar series is designed to engender health system resilience by promoting agenda-setting conversations among policy makers, donor agencies, Civil Society and professional bodies. The webinar series will foster policy dialogues that will help to collate lessons learned and insights that have implications for health system resilience in Nigeria. The maiden edition…
Advancing the cause of universal health coverage in Nigeria
15 February 2014 NIGERIA accounts for a disproportionate share of global burden of disease; while Nigerians represent just 2 percent of the world population the country accounts for 13 percent of the under-five mortality globally according to the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation ( 2013). In the same vein, Nigeria is ranked among…
Strengthening Health System Governance for Improved Quality of Maternal Health Care in Nigeria
22 February 2017 Gaps in availability and quality of maternal health care services constitute a major obstacle to achieving the desired maternal health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries such as Nigeria. Initiatives aimed at improving quality of maternal health care tend to address quality of care issues in isolation, without considering wider system-level issues…
Health Insurance Under One Roof: Way Out For Nigeria’s Health Reform
26 February 2020 The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) established in 1999 with the mandate of extending health insurance to all Nigerians by the year 2015. However, a few defects in the legal, institutional and operational frameworks of the Agency impeded this Universal Health Coverage (UHC) quest, such that naturally the 2015 target was invariably…