Lagos Reiterates Commitment To Strenghtening Health Security

Prof. Akin Abayomi, the Commissioner for Health, Lagos State, has reiterated the state's commitment to strengthening  health security, equitable recovery funds and the COVID-19 pandemic

Abayomi said this in Lagos on Friday when a coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the Media paid him a visit on the state COVID-19 and Health Security scorecard.

Abayomi revealed that the state now had an emergency preparedness budget line above its normal emergency response budget.

“It is a continuation of our COVID-19 response, it is a dedicated budget line that we have created for the 2022 and 2023 state budgets.

”Last year the state had about N3 billion for emergency response and for next year, the state had an equal amount, but that’s because it was generated.

“Apart from that, the government is now committing a vote of charge, whether or not the state ministry of health is generating income.

"We had that this year and we are also likely to have that in 2023,” he explained.

He said the vote of charge for the state for emergency preparedness in 2021 was about one billion naira for public health emergencies and also N250 million for medical emergencies.

“Apart from that, we had about three billion for dedicated response to COVID-19, which will be replicated for 2023.

"So we have money for COVID-19 in the state and other infectious disease outbreaks in the state,” he explained.

Abayomi said that the state also had its sustainability plan and also made it not a drain on the state budget.

“Lagos State does not see health as a constant drain on its budget; we approached it as a generation of income.

“So in Lagos State, we have 70 per cent of people go to the public healthcare centres while people who go to the private sector are just 30 per cent, so we are doing the same thing by partitioning response to emergencies,” he said.

The commissioner said the private sector should be able to manage some of the cases so that not everyone in the state would be coming to the public facilities.

“Not everybody is coming into the public sector where it’s always free, at least for COVID-19 when they go to the private sector, you know, no private sector will deliver services for free to you whether it is testing, or care or vaccination.

“But we are the regulators. So there’s a regulatory fee for us to ensure quality assurance.”

Muhammad Usman, Chairman of the National Advocates for Health, said the COVID-19 and health security accountability scorecard was developed through the adaptation of indicators from the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Joint External Evaluation tool for Evaluation of International Health Regulation (IHR).

Usman said the second edition review of government documents included budget and presentations, a review of COVID-19-related government online dashboards, and advocacy/retreat meetings with relevant government agencies, CSOs, media and young people.

He said that the scorecard was developed to report CSOs’ review of Lagos state's capacity for preparedness and response to health security and COVID-19.

“The scorecard serves as evidence to be used by all stakeholders, including CSOs, professionals, media, advocates, young people and development partners.”