From ABDULRA'UF IBRAHIM, Abuja
THE Special Institute on Health Millennium
Development Goals (HMDG), is to spend the sum of N6.240 million between 2004
and 2007 to achieve its desired goals.
The minister of health, Professor Eyitayo Lambo
made the revelation at the pre-meeting press conference on High level Forum
on Health Millennium Development Goals in Abuja last week.
He explained that this amount includes the
inputs of major stakeholders such as federal, state and the local
governments and the development partners amounting to N32.1 billion, N16.1
billion and about N10.2 billion respectively within the said period.
"For the federal government, an additional N10
billion will be needed to argument the spending envelop of N60 billion as
provided for in the 2005 budget proposal in order to implement the
initiative between now and end of 2005", he added.
An advocacy visit to Niger state recently
resulted to an immediate redeemable pledge of N130 million by the state and
local governments to support the implementation of the supply of insecticide
treated nets alone.
According to him many development partners are
ready to support Nigeria to accelerate the achievements of the MDGs.
He disclosed that twelve pilot states were
selected each from six geo-political zone and one additional state was
selected from each from Northwest and Northeast zones.
The selected states he stated are Imo and
Anambra (Southeast), Ogun and Ekiti (Southwest), Edo and Bayelsa (Southsouth),
Niger and Kogi (Northcentral), Katsina, Zamfara and Sokoto (Northwest)
Bauchi, Taraba and Adamawa (Northeast).
�It is expected that the pilot period
(2004-2005), of the implementation of the initiative will be scaled up
nationally", the minister said.
Dr. Lambo explained that the eight goals of MDG
include reduction of maternal mortality by three-quarters, reduce child
mortality by two-thirds and combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases.
Others he added are the reduction to halve the
proportion of people who suffer from hunger, improve access to safe drinking
water and ensure affordable, safe access to essential drugs.
Addressing all these goals, he said will help
achieve the overacrching goal of reducing the number of people who live in
extreme poverty by half.
It would be recalled that the 2003 Nigeria
Democratic Health Survey (NDHS), which provides data to track progress
towards the country's attainment of health millennium development goals show
that the country has a very low immunization coverage high infant/child
maternal mortality rates; high prevalence of malaria and about 10 per cent
reduction on HIV prevalence rate but with over 3 million people infected.
