The Gombe State Accountability Mechanism, has presented the Health Budget Scorecard of the State Accountability Framework from across six local government areas.
The scorecard sought and evaluateed the Basic Health Care Provision Fund key budget performance indicators in Akko, Billiri, Kaltungo, Kwami, Gombe and Yamaltu-Deba LGAs for transparency and timeliness of budget releases, citizens and civil society participation and resource allocation.
The indicators were in the areas of receiving quarterly funding, that is, if the facility is receiving funding from the Primary Healthcare Agency Annual Budget, whether the facility received Captivation payment on or before the 5th of the month, supervision from the State Primary Healthcare Development Agency or Gombe State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency in the last quarter and 24 hour service provision in the facilities, among others.
The Chairman of the Gombe State Accountability Mechanism, Mr. Alhassan Yahya, said the outcome was encouraging.
He commended the government and the agencies under the Ministry of Health, GoHealth and Primary Healthcare Development Agency.
He said the exercise was conducted without any interference from the government.
Mr. Yahya said during the collation of data, local government PHC coordinators and focal persons handling the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund in the six facilities visited were engaged, where it was able to track 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, and also, that women and children would enjoy the benefit of the programme.
“At the end of the day, we were able to identify that the end users were benefiting from the funds,” said Mr. Yahya.
More Training
He, 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 for them to master the use of computers and use the data effectively.
The 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 and the control rooms for complaints would 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 will be improve on,” Dr. Dahiru said.
In the meantime, the Programme Officer of Lisdel, a partner organisation, Mr. Ayobamidele Adamilola, said his organisation was delighted to be part of the process in providing support for citizen-led accountability framework.
Confidence Okwuchi
