Senate Committee demands 100% release of health Budget

The Senate Committee on Health has called on the executive to ensure 100 percent release of all budgetary allocations to the health ministry to enable tertiary health institutions in the country perform better.

Chairman of the committee, Senator Lanre Tejuosho, who disclosed this when he led members of the committee on oversight visit to five Federal Government owned tertiary health institutions in Lagos, said health institutions in the country required adequate funding to be able to reverse medical tourism among Nigerians.

The committee visited on-going projects at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Federal Medical Centre, Ebute Meta, Federal Neuro-Psychiatrist Hospital, Yaba and the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi.

Tejuosho said they were visiting the five institutions to see how far they have gone with the 2018 budget before appropriating for 2019.

Registering his observations on the performance of the five institutions at the end of the exercise, Tejuosho, said: “The institutions are having similar challenges of release of fund which are not coming at the right time.

For most of them, they have only received 10 percent of their 2018 capital budget which makes it difficult for us to blame them for lack of performance. You cannot expect them to do much with 10 percent release.”

Giving further insight into the visit, Tejuoso said: “We chose the health institutions that we visited because they are the ones that our people need to reverse medical tourism.

“We are going to improve on budget appropriation for all of them and appeal to the executive to ensure enough release of fund for the health institutions.

“We are going to propose to the executive to ensure 100 percent release of fund to the health sector. Health ministry should be number one on the list of government budget and releases than any other ministry.”

The committee however, commended the management of LUTH for the various on-going projects at the hospital, urging all the five institutions to prioritise their needs and include them in the 2019 budget for consideration.

The visit showed that the institutions were facing similar problems ranging from inadequate funding, delay in the release of appropriated fund and problem of power supply which made some of them unable to remit 25 % of their Internally Generated Fund to the Federal Government.

LUTH CMD, Prof. Chris Bode, in his response, said there were ongoing projects and renovation of some buildings at the hospital which included Ward B, radio diagnosis, oncology and radiotherapy departments and independent power plant project.

He said the continuous upgrading of health facilities would help reduce the number of Nigerians travelling outside the country for medical treatment.

Bode appealed to the Committee to increase their budget in order to pay outstanding salaries of doctors to avert strike.

On her part, Director General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, expressed worry over the shortage of personnel and equipment facing the agency.

“The last recruitment exercise by NAFDAC was in 2016 and since then many people had left service without being replaced. Right now, we are in short of staff like crazy”, she said.