PHC: ‘FCTA seeks $22b to revitalize Primary Healthcare, close 20% Funding Gap’

The Federal Capital Territory Administration FCTA has said it requires about $22 billion to close the 20 percent funding gap in the revitalization of its Primary Healthcare Centres. 

According to Vanguard, the Secretary, Health and Human Services Secretariat (HHSS) in the Administration, Dr Abubakar Tafida disclosed this at a news conference in Abuja.

According to him, the city’s health infrastructure, the bulk of which caters for patients at the primary level is overstretched as a result of the expanding population of the FCT which is now placed at six million as opposed to the initial projection of between 1.5 to two million inhabitants.

To this end, the Health and Human Service Secretariat in collaboration with international partners came up with a system to allow well meaning individuals help revitalize PHCs in the territory.

He said; “FCT requires about $22bn to provide drugs, consumables and generally revitalize its PHCs.

“FCT has an increasing population of about six million, whereas the infrastructure was built to accommodate about 1.5m and so we have to link our PHCs with our secondary institutions to ensure a robust referral system to cater for patients.

“It would be ridiculous for us to sit and assume that we have the resources to provide all the needed drugs and consumables and needed skilled human resources to revitalize our PHCs.

“As recently as two months ago, we were presented with drugs worth almost $2.4m by USAID.

“We are pleading with well meaning individuals to give back to the society by lifting the quality of healthcare delivery. We are not asking them to give us the money. They can look around and see the state of the PHCs and decide the little they can do. You can pick one PHC and build a borehole or support a midwife or two and so on.

“We are developing a website where anybody who is interested in doing something can pick a PHC and tell us what he wants to do to improve the quality of care in any of our facilities.

“With regards to the basic healthcare provision fund, each PHC is expected to receive N300,000 quarterly in running its services but unfortunately, most of these PHCs are far from this kind of support. This support is too small for us now and this is why we are appealing to well-meaning individuals for assistance. According to the programme, one PHC would be taken care of per ward and we have 62 wards in the FCT.

“However, this is not enough. In the FCT, we have about 249 PHCs but interestingly, within 18 months, we have been able to make clinical interventions in 83 of them”.