The Gombe State Accountability Mechanism (GOSAM), has released the State's Health Budget Scorecard, which indicated a commendable improvement, particularly in the timely release of funds for basic health care services.
The scorecard sought to evaluate key budget performance indicators for transparency and timeliness of budget releases, citizens and civil society participation and resource allocation for basic health care services in six out of the eleven Local Government Areas of the State in the last six months.
Chairman of GOSAM, Mr. Alhassan Yahya, said the outcome was encouraging and commended the State Government and agencies under the State Ministry of Health. He also commended GoHealth and the State Primary Healthcare Development Agency over the feat achieved.
He explained that the exercise was conducted without any interference from the State Government, adding that the indicators were in the areas of receiving quarterly funding from the Primary Health Care Board, annual budget and whether the facilities received captivation payment on or before the 5th of the month.
Other indicators are the supervisory roles by the State Primary Health Care Development Agency and the Gombe State Contributory Health Care Management Agency (GoHealth) in the last quarter as well as the 24 hour service provision in the facilities among other.
Mr Yahya said, during the collation of data, Local Government PHC coordinators and focal persons handling the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund in the facilities visited were engaged. It was also able to track whether the funds released by the Government was being used by the end users.
He hoped that the programme would be scaled up to cover more vulnerable people, particularly women and children to enjoy the benefits of the programme.
"At the end of the day, we were able to identify that the end users were benefiting from the funds," Mr. Yahya said, but however called on the Government to continue with the timely release of funds for the vulnerable to continue to access services, more training for the focal persons handling Basic Healthcare Funds so that they can master the use of computers and data effectively.
In his remarks, the Gombe State Commissioner of Health, Dr. Habu Dahiru, said the concept of the Accountability Framework was adopted to assess and know how the Government was performing and afterwards, reward and sanction where necessary.
Dr. Daniru however, pledged that the Government would do more to ensure more visitation of facilities where low visitation was recorded, while the issue of computer appreciation and functionality would be improved upon. The control rooms for complaints would also be improved upon.
"I do know it's all about computer appreciation because all complaints are sent online and referrals are also sent online. So, if the facilities that are offering basic healthcare have computer appreciation, they will be able to refer. They will also be able to send complaints through the same process. So, we will also improve on the number of meetings at the technical working group," Dr. Daniru said.
Programme Officer of Lisdel, a partner organisation on the programme, Mr. Ayobamidele Ademuyiwa Adamilola, also expressed satisfaction with the process.
0 comments:
Post a Comment