CISLAC, stakeholders decry ‘fluctuating’ health budget 

Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has decried the perennial low budgetary allocation to the health sector, saying health budget has fluctuated with percentages ranging from 3.58 percent to 5.58 percent.

This, it observed is a far cry to the Abuja declaration of 15 percent.

Stakeholders frowned at the development during the Civil Society Capacity Building Workshop on Basic Healthcare Funding in Nigeria under the project tagged, “Reinvestment: Increasing Legislative Oversight on Primary Health Care in Nigeria” held in Lagos.

The workshop was aimed at educating the CSOs on techniques for engaging the legislators, building their knowledge on advocacy approach to legislative engagement and ensuring they have effective means of educating and informing state legislators and other policymakers about the importance of healthcare investments and other interventions.

Executive Director of CISLAC, Mallam Auwal Musa, said the poor funding had stymied the growth of the sector, blaming the trend on absence of political will from government.

“The challenges facing primary healthcare in Nigeria are complex and essentially arising from poor legal and regulatory frameworks and implementation, economic and socio cultural challenges as well as a dearth of infrastructure, health personnel and equipment plague the Nigerian primary health care system”, he said.

He also noted that states and local government authorities have failed to provide skilled manpower at the primary healthcare centers which impede adequate health intervention.

Speaking on, “Financing for Primary Healthcare: Harnessing Domestic Funding Opportunities, Enabling Policies and Legislation”, a medical expert, Dr. Jibril Muhammad Bashar, said one way of providing sufficient financial protection is by incorporating a risk-sharing plan in the healthcare financing mechanism.

This will ensure that the risk of incurring unexpected healthcare expenditure does not fall solely on an individual or household, he said.

Bashar said policy-makers need to focus on both public and private spending and ensure equity in distribution because public government spending accounts for less than 25% of total health spending in low-income countries (LIC).

Bashar however urged the government to prioritize public spending in health according to its own morbidity, mortality, and availability of funds.

“Over the past decade, FG’s health budget has fluctuated with percentages ranging from 3.58% being the lowest allocation in 2010 to 5.58% in 2011 budget out of the respective total annual budgets. In 2017, the health budget of the 36 states was about 332.1billion, which was about 4.9% of total budget size notably short of the Abuja declaration target 15% of annual budget while in 2018 Nigeria and its 36 states plan to spend 340.46bn and N9.15trillion, up from 2017 figures of 308.46bn and 6.75trillion,” he said.