SACoM joins two technical working groups in Sokoto

By Adamu Suleiman

The Sokoto state Accountability Coalition on Maternal Health (SACoM), a platform of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), has secured membership of two health related technical committee groups in the state Ministry of Health.

The two groups included; the Saving One Million Lives Steering Committee and the Healthcare Financing Technical Working Group respectively.

The essence is to ensure the application of accountability mechanism in the activities and programs of the ministry.

 SACoM’s Knowledge and Communication Committee chairman, Malam Mu’azu
Muhammad, said the development followed a formal visit on Tuesday to the state Commissioner for Health, Dr Balarabe Shehu Kakale by a team of SACoM officials. “Its main thrust is to influence a quarterly interactive forum to be tagged #OpenSMoH, a formal forum and catalyst that will encourage and build an avenue for the coming together of senior government officials, CSOs and Media for budget performance review and actions.“ In addition to provoking a dependable ‎strategic advocacy to political actors that influences adequate, transparent spending and timely release of finances in the health sector,” he said.However, Dr Kakale who lauded who lauded the efforts of Community Health Research Initiative (CHR) under the coordination of Dr Aminu Magashi Garba for supporting the formation of the coalition in the state.

“I must commend the effort of Dr Magashi for strengthening the active collaboration initiative to improve and support the activities of the health sector in the state for positive performance”, Dr Kakale stated.

‎‎In her earlier remarks on behalf of SACoM‎ team, the Co-chair of the coalition, Hajiya Ubaida Bello Muhammad thanked the Commissioner for acknowledging the coalition as a team player in the health sector.

She stressed that the coalition was formed in order to advocate for increases in yearly budgetary allocations and timely release of funds for maternal health related programs in the state.

Hajiya Ubaida assured the commissioner of the coalition’s resolve to support every step that would effectively enhance the performance of the state health sector towards realising service delivery to the people, through objective and responsive monitoring for good governance.

“Ours is to promote healthy, transparent, accountable mechanisms that would be sustained ‎to ensure increase budgetary allocation, analysis as well as performance for the health benefit of the people via tracking of routine health related activities in the state,” she said.