By Khalid Idris Doya
USAID-Integrated Health Program (IHP) has urged the Bauchi state government to motivate health workers to be able to serve people in the rural communities for efficient service delivery.
IHP Health Financing Advisor, Pharm. Khalid Kasimu made the call while presenting a paper on health financing outlook 2024 and support to Bauchi state at a one day media quarterly meeting organised by IHP on yesterday.
Kasimu said that the 2024 budget outlook would need to concretize efforts in making adequate provision for human resources to have adequate incentives packages that would attract health workers into the state.
This, according to the financing advisor, would enable the programme to fill-in the gap while creating more enrolment and access to people in healthcare services, and called on the state government to ensure efficient use of human resources in the healthcare centres.
He also called for a lot of motivation for workers to be to serve the people in rural communities who are the majority, because the majority of health workers are concentrated in urban centres.
"We need to ensure that there is a lot of motivation for workers to be able to serve people in the rural communities which are the majority because the concentration of health workers are in the urban centres while the rural areas have very few workers due to lack of enough motivation or safety for them to really function in the rural facilities".
Kasimu added, “We also want the state government to ensure the efficient use of our resources in the health centres, as well as other health facilities by putting in an accountability mechanism and system that will attract expenditure of our resources in the health sector”.
Pharmacist Khalid Kasimu also called on the Bauchi state government to use part of the fuel subsidy removal palliatives allocated to it by the federal government and enroll vulnerable members of the society into the state’s health insurance scheme.
“The palliative for fuel subsidy removal allocated to each state has been published, I am sure if you check the dailies that information is there, how much each state got is there. What we are advocating for Bauchi state is that they can do things differently,” he said.
Pharmacist Kasimu while reasoning that the issue of healthcare which consumes most of the incomes of the vulnerable people, advised that they should be given the priority attention.
He added; “Once you are able to enroll them they will have access to quality healthcare, use twelve thousand Naira per individual to register them on the contributory health care scheme in the state”.
Pharmacist Kasimu further explained, by enrolling them, they will have the privilege to access quality healthcare for a whole year which will reduce the effect of health care expenditure that is pushing them into poverty.
The permanent secretary in the Bauchi state Ministry of budget and economic planning, Alhaji Saleh Giade, assured that the state budget process has already started and very soon discussions with civil society organizations and other stakeholders would be held in the three senatorial districts to fine-tune the budget.
Earlier in her welcoming remarks, Mrs Elizabeth Cah, the Journalists for Public Health Initiative and Development (J4PD), said that the meeting was going to accord journalists more knowledge of how to track budget implementation with a view to improving spendings in the health sector.
She said, “The meeting was organised to improve understanding and accurately report progress on budget performances and financing reforms in Bauchi.
“Increase Health Insurance awareness among the public as well as develop capacity of the Media outlet on reporting health issues.”
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