UNICEF, Governors Forum okay Jigawa’s healthcare facilities for implementation of SWAp

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Wednesday led a team to Jigawa State and assessed some primary healthcare facilities in the state for the implementation of the Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp) meant to improve healthcare for Nigerians from the sub-national level.

The team led by UNICEF’s Chief of Health, Abuja, Eduardo Celades Blanco, includes representatives from the Nigeria Governors Forum, Federal Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation, among others. The team visited some healthcare facilities in rural areas of the state for the implementation of the programme.

One of the team members, the Permanent Secretary of Jigawa State Ministry of Health, Kabiru Ibrahim, told reporters that the visit aimed to optimise the delivery of healthcare services in the state for the implementation of the swaps programme, which is a unit in the federal ministry of health.

Mr Ibrahim said the SWAp programme was designed to provide a platform where resources would be put together alongside the burden of illnesses and diseases within the country to apportion resources according to the magnitude of health challenges across the country.

“The SWAp is a new paradigm in the delivery of resources in Nigeria’s health programming; it entails the collection of contributions from donors organisations from the governments into one common basket to address challenges across the different programmes without duplicating efforts and ignoring the underserved populations”, Mr Ibrahim said.

He said with the SWAp you can access a portion of resources so that there won’t be heavy disparity within the states and at the local government levels.

“It’s a planning approach to allocate resources according to needs; the more the problem, the more the resources. The team is here to look at how the operationalisation of the SWAp as a programme can function at the subnational level.

“The team decided to pick Jigawa because it’s a state that is working, the government is dealing with problems head-on, partners are always behind the government, and the government is taking the leadership in the provision of healthcare and places where there are results-based on intervention put together by the government and partners.

“Jigawa has a very good rate in terms of immunised people, delivery at healthcare facilities, provision of antenatal care, and people who have access to bednets. These are all the parameters that count progress in the healthcare sector, which Jigawa is doing well”, Mr Ibrahim said.

“The team picked Jigawa to learn lessons on how can the coordination platform in terms of planning, pulling resources, looking at the burdens and allocation of resources according to burdens and what kind of strategy is going to work to provide that kind of dimension that other states can copy from Jigawa state, that is the mission of coming to Jigawa”, Mr Ibrahim added.

The team has visited about three healthcare facilities in rural areas and is satisfied with what they see on the ground. Mr Ibrahim added that they use Jigawa state’s coordinating resource model as a yardstick for implementing SWAp nationwide.

The SWAp is an aid delivery mechanism whereby national governments lead the partnership, and all funding is directed toward supporting a set of national policies through common management systems guided by agreed policy, expenditure and institutional frameworks, as well as strong accountability mechanisms.