The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole has said that funds earmarked for the programme, ‘Saving One Million Lives’(SOML) will only be made available to federal and state governments based on their previous achievements and results in tackling certain health issues.
Revealing this in a statement, made available to LEADERSHIP, Adewole said that the fund is meant to tackle issues relating to maternal and child and reproductive health.
The statement reads, “ improve maternal and child health through a result- focused partnership with state ministries of health, it also designed to facilitate and structure the flow of resources to pay for results, which are desired goals, outcomes and impacts than simply paying for process or reimbursing activity costs.”
It further says, “the program would provide funds to the federal and state Government based on achievement of results across a set five Disbursement Linked Indicators (DLIs),DLI 1- Increasing Utilization of High Impact Reproductive and Child Health and Nutrition, DLI 2- Increasing Quality of High Impact Reproductive and child Health and Nutrition Interventions, DLI 3, Improving M&E Systems and Data Utilization, DLI 4- Increasing Utilization and Quality of Reproductive and Child Health and Health and Nutrition Intervention through private sector Innovations and DLI 5- Increasing Transparency in Management and Budgeting for PHC.”
The Minister who made the submission during a workshop organized for Health Commissioners in Kaduna, said, the initiative was in consistent with the ministry goal for Universal Health Coverage adding that it is in line with other strategic documents such as the National Strategic Health Development Plan (NSHDP) and the National Vision 20:2020.
He also noted that an Independent Verification Agent (IVA) could be recruited to review and validate any data that was generated on progress, so as to avoid corruption “The IVA would also examine the results of the Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transition household surveys and the health facility surveys to calculate how much should be paid to each state,” he added.