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President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday in Abuja said the budget for health would be increased to 12 per cent in 2007......
President Olusegun Obasanjo yesterday in Abuja said the budget for health would be increased to 12 per cent in 2007.
This would translate into a three per cent increase from nine per cent in 2006.
"I have directed that by 2007, health budget must attain 12 per cent," Obasanjo said at the opening of the 7th Ordinary meeting of Assembly of Health Ministers of the West African Health Organisation (WAHO).
He said the increase was part of efforts to meet the 15 per cent target set by African leaders in 2001 as the least to be devoted to health in their national budgets.
"In Nigeria, we are striving very hard to meet this target by allotting sufficient funds from regular allocations, as well as from debt relief gains," he said.
Obasanjo further said: "Health is now treated as a national priority like education."
At the sub-regional level, Obasanjo observed that even if all the countries met the 15 per cent target, funds might still not be enough to tackle HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria that were ravaging West Africa.
He also said estimates showed that a minimum of 34 dollars per capita was required to meet Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as they related to health.
Obasanjo noted that while many West African countries were still dependent on external funding which were not sustainable, accountability remained a challenge.
He said it was pertinent to imbibe the culture of transparency and accountability to ensure sustained donor support, just as the need to have viable strategies to ensure sustainability and predictability of funding was necessary.
Obasanjo said shortage of health workforce had not received adequate attention "in our efforts to address the macro-economic issues and reform our economies and our health systems."
He said the challenge facing health ministers, associations and institutions for health professionals was how to find an immediate solution to the problem, while elaborating a road-map for long term solution.
On WAHO meeting, he said it was a platform to critically look at issues concerning health in the sub-region, since statistics on the issue "is nothing
to be proud of."
"With the scourge of HIV and AIDS and the emergence of resistant strains of malaria and TB, statistics are much worse than could have been predicted in the early 1990s.
"Not only did we fail to achieve Health For All by the Year 2000, the hope of achieving this in the next 20 years, or meeting the health objectives for MDGs, appear bleak, except we are collectively committed and dedicated to make the difference," Obasanjo said.