By Edoamaowo Udeme
The Federal Government and Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), have committed the sum of $2.7 billion, towards strengthening routine immunisation programmes and Primary Health Care (PHC) services in the country within the next 10 years.
Addressing newsmen on Monday in Abuja, the minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole , noted that the commitment was coming on the heels of the approval made by GAVI board sitting recently in Geneva, Switzerland, on Nigeria’s proposal for GAVI transition, `the Nigeria Strategy for Routine Immunisation and Primary Health Care Systems’ Strengthening’ (NSIPSS).
He maintained that with the approval Nigeria stands to save the lives of an additional 1,539,651 children under one year by 2028, by driving immunisation rates up to 85 per cent in all states of the federation.
According to him, GAVI had committed $1.03 billion of the NSIPSS investment which was worth over $2.7 billion, while the federal government counterpart contribution was in excess of $1.9 billion. He added that the investment would enable Nigeria provide vaccines for its children over the next 10 years.
“Following the rebasing of the economy, Nigeria rose above the threshold of support for GAVI eligible countries and entered into an accelerated transition from GAVI support.
“This implied that Nigeria will have to progressively increase funding for its immunisation programme and the co-financing of vaccines until Nigeria transits completely in 2021 out of GAVI support,’’ he said.
Adewole explained that Nigeria had sought an extension of GAVI support from 2021 to 2028, due to the poor macroeconomic indices, tight fiscal space, further reduction in funding for Polio related activities and very low immunisation coverage.
On his part, the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Faisal Shuaib, noted that the GAVI board took an unprecedented step to approve support to Nigeria.
While disclosing that the NPHCDA had developed a document which clearly articulated in a comprehensive manner, all that was needed to fix the PHC system in the country, he explained that the global community had reviewed the document and agreed with the agency that the aspirations and hopes in the document were realisable before declaring its support to help the agency achieve its goals within the next 10 years.
Shuaib who noted that there was paucity of funds in the health sector especially the PHC sector, said the approval would inject funds into the primary healthcare industry to ensure that PHC centres get adequate infrastructure for diagnosis, adequate drugs and better human resources.
