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Health Ministers Ali Pate, Tunji Alausa Present Roadmap To Improve Health Sector

Published

1 year ago

Sep 11, 2023.

Eko Hot Blog reports that the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Ali Pate and the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Tunji Alausa, have presented their roadmap to improve the health sector.

The duo made the presentation at the weekend during a 3-day Ministerial Briefing organised by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.

The retreat focused on the innovative ways and strategies that will promote the standard of healthcare system in Nigeria.

Pate assured Nigerians of the Federal Government’s preparedness to move in the right direction in achieving a quality healthcare system for the citizens.

The minister decried the present state of healthcare delivery in the country, citing instances of health emergencies such as the medical officer who had issues from an accident and died due to inability to get urgent healthcare, prevalent maternal mortality as well as unfortunate situations of Diphtheria outbreak in many states claiming the lives of children when there are safe and efficacious vaccines available among others.

“These people depend on us and the healthcare system to deliver on preventable interventions and rehabilitation for all the care they need and they are not getting it,” he said.

“We are spending much more than Niger Republic, Ethiopia, and Ghana yet we are not getting the result of what we are spending. There is something that is not right in terms of how we do what we do in the health sector, the urgency to change I think is what informed our President who gave this sector the mandate to deliver, as he wants this sector to be one sector with special breakthrough and innovations.”

On his part, Alausa said the health and social welfare ministry will collaborate and work together with critical stakeholders to find solutions to the lingering problems in the country’s health sector.

“We have gone through many transitions, the retreat, strategic workshop, and ministerial briefing. This is a listening session; we want to listen to the leadership of the Ministry of Health and see where things are,” he said.

“Many people have worked hard in the last years or decades, but if we are honest with ourselves, we are not there yet. This is not the trend of healthcare we want for our citizens. This is the year 2023 there is still a lot of things lacking in the healthcare system.

“So today we will listen and then we will work collaboratively in the next few days, come together and decide the way forward on what we want to do in the next four years. It’s going to be a collaborative effort, by Saturday we all decide and gather together and list our agenda on where we are going, so we have a sync, we are doing the same thing and talking together.

“President Bola Tinubu has made a commitment to citizens, he said several times that he was going to fix the health sector, and has given Pate and me the mandate to do everything that is humanly possible to fix the health sector for Nigerians and we will do it… a lot of people have worked so hard but for once let’s be honest with ourselves, we are still far from where we should be and that’s where we are beginning to work on.

“I am confident that we are going to have an amazing robust, fruitful, honest discussion with ourselves, we are going to listen and take everybody’s input, put it together and amalgamate everything together and come up with what will work for Nigerians.”

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