FG gets a grant of$1.5m from the world Bank for health care delivery in Nigeria in 2017.

By Abdullahi Shuaibu, Lafia.

The Programme Manager, saving one million lives for Nasarawa state, Mrs Anna Joshua has said that her programme which took off in 2017 has given the federal government of Nigeria $1.5milion as initial take off grant to expand access to essential primary health care services for women and children as a global priority. Mrs Anna Joshua who stated this in a5- day workshop in kini country home hotel, Akwanga also noted that the grant was to improve the quantity of maternal new born and child health as well as targeting women of productive age and child under the age of five in the state. The programme Manager maintained that SOML is the federal ministry of health initiative as a response to poor health outcomes with a particular reference to women and children under the age of five.. she pointed out that a bold step was taken to improve maternal and child health, nutrition and population as well as a paradigm shift from inputs with emphasis on results (P4R) According to her, the six intervention areas are vaccination coverage (penta 3) contraceptive prevalence rate (Modern methods) vitamin A coverage skilled birth attendance LLIN usage by children 5- year and women being tested for HIV during ANC. She said some of the achievements recorded to include capacity building of health care workers across the six thermatic area, provision of hospital equipment across the three level of cares, printing of hospital materials of PHC such as the child health cards,IEC materials etc. Provision of hospital commodities and consumables and renovations of health facilities across the three level of health care respectively. The workshop drew participants from the state ministry of health, Nasarawa state primary health care development Agency, Dalhatu Araf Specialist hospital, Health services Management board, and partners. The workshop amongst other things will seek for more bilateral synergy amongst the key actors in the health sector as well as to collaborate with non state actors for adequate working relationship to achieve the desired results objectives especially universal health coverage as a sustainable plan for the state.