Federal Govt Urges States To Lift Embargo On Health Workers’ Employment

As Nigeria joins the global community to mark World Health Day, the federal government has appealed to state governments to remove their embargo on the employment of health workers.

The minister of health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, made the call yesterday, at a press briefing in commemoration of the 2023 World Health Day, with the theme:” Health for All,”

He urged the state governments to invest in hiring more health workers which he described as a barrier to the country’s vision of achieving universal health coverage and improved quality of care.

Ehanire said, “I call on all concerned to ensure that more frontline health workers are recruited than others to ensure the substantial reduction in shortage of health workers. The personnel budgets of health facilities should be spent on maintaining more numbers of frontline healthcare workers.”

In his remarks, the World Health Organisation (WHO’s) regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, said strengthening health systems based on strong primary healthcare (PHC) was crucial to building back better and accelerating progress towards universal health coverage and health security.

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He said< “Financial investment in PHC oriented by the building blocks of health systems, particularly a health workforce, health infrastructure, medicines and health technologies, should be supported and guided by evidence .

“Ensuring additional investment to improve financial risk protection, addressing inequities, and building the resilience of national health systems in the post-COVID era are critical to our efforts to accelerate progress towards UHC in the African Region.

“As we move towards the 2030 universal health coverage target, we must be innovative and tackle persistent challenges. I encourage our Member States and all stakeholders to play our roles in ensuring that political commitment is translated into evidence-based policies, strategies and plans. These, in turn, must receive the investment they require to be effectively implemented,” he said.