New Telegraph

TCI to FG, states: Upscale health budget for COVID-19

The Challenge Initiative (TCI), a non-governmental organisation, has called on state and the federal governments not to tamper with the budgetary provision for the health sector in a bid to review the fiscal year 2020 budget to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

The call came against the backdrop of proposed review of budgetary provisions by states and federal governments to curtail the spread of the disease.

 

 

The group hailed the Delta State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, for increasing budgetary provision for family planning consumables in 2020 to N25 million from the initial N8 million in 2018, but decried how the budget of federal government dropped from N2.9 billion provision in 2018 to N300 million 2019 for the purpose.

 

The group lamented paucity of funds for health educators at the local government level to embark on aggressive family planning sensitisation.

 

At the media advocacy workshop in Asaba tagged; Family Planning Budget Line Release – The Great Imperative in Delta, Chairperson of Advocacy Core Group, Rachael Obodo-Obunseli, supported by the Principal Medical Officer, Health Services, Delta State University  Mrs. Bobola Agbonle, said unless government at all levels takes family planning seriously, the nation’s population would continue to explode.

 

 

 

She said: “In the 2018 fiscal year, the Delta State government estimated N8 million for family planning programmes. The state increased it to N25 million in 2020. The implementation of the programme across the federation is zero, hence consumables to execute the initiative is scarce in the healthcare facilities.”

 

 

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