By Mary Jalingo
Niger State Commissioner of Health, Dr Mustapha Jibril, said the state government have put in place structures to ensure transparency and accountability in the health sector.
The commissioner stated this during a one-day stakeholders meeting on accountability for Maternal and Newborn Child Health (MNCH) organised by White Ribbon Alliance Nigeria (WRAN) in collaboration with the State Ministry of Health and State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (SPHCDA) held in Minna.
Dr Mustapha Jibril
Dr Jibril said accountability starts from having the right structures and that was why the state runs a programme refers to as Niger Health 0.1, where the state have one health system with adequate attention given.
He said the state was committed to having a well-structured citizens led accountability mechanism, especially as it was one of the three states in the country to implement the basic health care provision funds.
He added that it can largely be attributed to its political will as the state was able to pay its counterpart funds of about N100 million to the account of SPHCDA.
On the relevance of the Ward Heath Development Committee (WHDC) to the improvement of the health sector in the state, the commissioner said WHDC were very important in making sure that communities are carry along in decisions making and policies implementation.
He said the state under the Saving 1 million lives was working hard to ensure that all the WHDC in the 274 wards were reactivated, noting that with the support of partners such as WRAN, the state has all it need to ensure that they are active within the next two months
Speaking earlier, the Country Director, WRAN, Mr Tonte Ibraye said the organization mobilises citizens to demand for accountability and also advices government on issues bordering on MNCH.
He said the WRAN was in the state to look at citizen engagement as it concerns MNCH and to ensure that the right structure and mechanism are put in place to engage government in order to properly address MNCH related issues.
Mr. Tonte Ibraye said WRAN was looking at ways to strengthen WHDC aimed at ensuring their effectiveness and that was why they were collaborating with the state Ministry of health to develop a framework to engage WHDC who he noted are closer to the people.
