The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, has expressed confidence that the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative (NHSRII), which President Bola Tinubu launched recently, will improve quality health delivery for all Nigerians.
Pate said the NHSRI was anchored on a sector-wide approach, in which the President had mandated every actor within the nation’s health system to adopt a common template.
This, the President had directed, would ensure that “developing and implementing initiatives to save lives, reduce physical and financial pain, and produce health for all Nigerians in an equitable and accessible way” was achieved.
The minister spoke at a roundtable discussion on Rethinking Malaria Elimination in Nigeria in Abuja.
The Nation newspaper in a report recalled that the President launched the NHSRI last December as part of achieving the Renewed Hope Agenda for improved quality health outcomes for all Nigerians.
Pate said Nigeria had not been able to eliminate malaria, 70 years since it began implementing programmes to eliminate the disease, due to “insufficient focus and commitment”.
He said that 24 years after the African Summit on Roll Back Malaria in Abuja (popularly called the Abuja Declaration on Roll Back Malaria), Nigeria still bears 30 per cent of the global burden with an estimated annual 68 million cases and over 194,000 deaths from the disease.
The Minister stressed that for Nigeria and other African countries to eliminate malaria, all critical stakeholders must “utilise newer evidence-based tools, quality data systems, strengthen collaborations, develop smarter financing models, and new procurement modalities to suit our realities in Nigeria as well as the African continent.
He said: “We must re-imagine the routine approaches that have so far defined our interventions over the recent years.