We Will Work With You To Advance Health Of Nigerians – Health Minister Tells NASS Members.
Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole has said that his Ministry would work in partnership with National Assembly Members to provide qualitative healthcare service to all Nigerians.
The Minister made this declaration on Tuesday, 9th February, 2016 while presenting 2016 budget before joint committees on Health, health institutions, legislative compliance and AIDs, Tuberculosis and Malaria (ATM) at the National Assembly Complex Abuja.
The Minister said, “We want to pledge that we will work with you to make health available; we will work with you to advance the health of Nigerians in a way that our children and future generation will enjoy better healthcare services.”
He appreciated the Chairmen of the four House committees for accepting to jointly receive the presentation of the budget instead of meeting individual committees. He said, “I want to thank you more sincerely for making things easy for us because, coming together implies that we will not come here four times; so we have to appreciate you.”
The Minister further said: “In many cases, the subject we are talking about is one health, whether through the perspective of institutions, the services or some of its projects; I think we are all talking about health of Nigerian people”, he said.
Earlier in his opening remarks, the Chairman House Committee on Health Services, Hon. Chika Okafor urged the Ministry to utilize the budget allocated to them appropriately.
He said: “We must ensure that money earmarked to any subhead in the budget is utilized appropriately, it is also our expectation that officers should not execute any programme in the budget that will not promote the health of Nigerians so that we can use the resources to address very critical health issues and thereby improving the health of the citizenry.”
“I want us to know that we are all stakeholders in the healthcare industry, we all know that, health is wealth, a healthy nation is a wealthy nation, the moment we fail to provide good healthcare to the citizenry it means we have fail as a nation, we pray that God will not allow us to fail.”
“The Position of these Committees was in tandem with World Health Organization ( WHO) which defined health as not only absence of disease but attainment of state of physical, mental and social well-being of people; as you carry out your assignment in the Ministry of health, reflect on the definition of health by WHO; you must ensure that your policies and programme are geared toward the development of physical and mental and social well-being of all Nigerians”, he added.
