By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
The UK has pumped in £2 million intervention finding through its Department of Health and Social Care to strengthen Nigeria’s health workforce to achieve the Universal Health Coverage, UHC, the World Health Organization, WHO has revealed.
The £2 million grant will specifically cover a two-year period to help Nigeria
optimize the performance, quality, and impact of the health workforce through evidence-informed policies and strategies.
The UK fund boost is to support healthcare staff recruitment and retention in three African countries, namely Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana – supporting resilience against global health challenges.
The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr. Richard Montgomery said, “A skilled, well-motivated and adequate health workforce is critical for Nigeria to #EndPreventableDeaths and build resilience against global threats.”
‘ This UK International Development funding aligns with the Nigerian health workforce strategic plan and will help the country upskill its workers, and improve health outcomes in the long run.”
The fund support is to strengthen the Nigerian health system, beset with challenges in having a resilient health system that can provide quality health services, promote health and prevent diseases.
The challenges have been further exacerbated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which directly impacts the availability of health workers to provide quality services across the country.
Accordingly, the 2-year HRH project aims to support the government at national and sub-national levels and support regulatory bodies, professional associations, and other key stakeholders to develop transformative strategies for scaling up the quantity and quality of health workers, including competency-based curricula development and reviews, WHO stated.
The project implementing interventions at sub-national in Nigeria will focus on six states of Cross River, Enugu,Jigawa, Kano and Lagos.
It will build on WHO technical support being provided to State governments through the 37 WHO sub-national offices in Nigeria.
According to WHO Representative in Nigeria. Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, the strength of every health system reflects the capacity and adequacy of its health workforce, which are necessary to deliver quality services to address population health needs,”
‘For a resilient and effective health system, Nigeria must have adequate numbers of health workers who are fit for purpose, motivated to perform, and equitably distributed across the subnational levels to enhance equity in access to their services by the population in need.”
“Through the UK government’s generous support through WHO, we will deploy the technical support from the 3 levels of the organization to support the development of evidence-based policies and strategies, capacity building and management for improved planning and management of Nigeria’s health workforce, Mulombo explained.
