The Federal Government has developed five health promotion Strategic Policy documents to empower Nigerians to live healthy lives and have healthy behaviours.
The Director Family Health, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr Salma Anas-kolo, said this at the opening of a two-day Fourth Quarter, 2020 National Health Promotion Forum (NHPF) meeting, in Abuja.
Dr Anas-Kolo, who is also the Chairperson of National Health Promotion Forum, said that the forum was able to facilitate technical and financial support for the development of a compendium of the documents in 2020.
The documents to be implemented include the National Adolescent Strategy for Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child Adolescent Health Plus Nutrition Programmes; the Knowledge Management Guideline for Health Promotion.
Others are Revised National Integrated Reproductive Newborn Child Adolescent and Elderly Health Plus Nutrition Social and Behaviour; Counselling Flip Chart on Key Household Practices and the Counselling Flip Chart on Family Planning/Child Birth Spacing.
National Health Promotion Policy
Another key achievement by the forum was the ministerial presentation and National Launch of the revised National Health Promotion Policy 2019 and the compendium of the strategic documents.
“Effective implementation of these strategic policy documents will ensure health promotion programming in Nigeria: steps out of its less successful past; become a formidable contributor to the achievement of the health related sustainable Development.
“The documents will become a formidable contributor to the achievement of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals; be an active vehicle for attainable of Universal Health Coverage.
“Also foster sector and inter-sectoral collaboration to deliver critical interventions that will make ‘healthy choices’ the easier choice for the people of Nigeria’’, she said.
Anas-Kolo also said that the meeting was aimed at securing buy-in of all key Stakeholders in successful implementation of the National Health Promotion Policy 2019.
She said deliberate efforts were required to successfully harness the benefits of health promotion in improving health, well-being and economic development.
“I implore you to participate actively so as to make the meeting engaging, dynamic and stimulating for maximum output.’’
The Chairperson noted that the last meeting was held in May, 2020 virtually due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
She said that the Fourth meeting earlier scheduled to hold in December could not hold until now due to paucity of funds.
On next step, the director said the Forum would involve selected states to facilitate health promotion activities across the country.
The Director, Health Promotion Division, FMoH, Mrs Ladidi Bako-Aiyegbusi said health promotion had been repositioned for results.
“All materials that we developed were sent to the states before the inauguration of the documents and they are to improve the state involvement in health promotion across the country’’, she said.
The meeting also looked at ways to improve on its activities to benefit Nigerians despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
The National Health Promotion Forum is a multi-sectoral advisory platform that was resuscitated in March 2018 to promote successful working relationships, open discussion, increase transparency and opportunity for leveraging resources from stakeholders.
Nneka Ukachukwu
