A leading development partner on family planning and reproductive health in Nigeria – Pathfinder International, has revealed how $11 million, approximately N3.370 billion got missing in the recently passed 2019 budget, saying the removal of such a very important allocation can worsen the already precarious situation of reproductive health in the country.
Pathfinder International also explains that the inexplicable missing of such a fund had already skyrocketed the retail cost of family planning and reproductive health consumables in health facilities and pharmaceutical shops across the country, having had knowledge of zero allocation of fund to reproductive health in 2019 budget.
Speaking during the Advance Family Planning SMART Advocacy Refresher Workshop for Media Professionals held at Hawthorn Suites by WYNDHAM, Abuja on Thursday, Farouk Jega, country director, Pathfinder International, noted that President Muhammdu Buhari-led Federal Government reneged its pledge to international donors and partners on funding of reproductive health through the inexplicable removal of such a fund in the budget.
At Family Planning Advocacy Program organised by Pathfinder International in conjunction with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Pub
lic Health and Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, Jega revealed that former President Goodluck Jonathan made provisions for Nigeria’s reproductive health through the defunct Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) in 2012.
He added that the cancellation of SURE-P which began in 2012, annual allocation for family planning and reproductive health in the country by President Buhari immediately he assumed presidency of Nigeria destabilized the whole process, hence, some unseen hands within the Federal Ministry of Health, Presidency and National Assembly removed the budgetary allocation for reproductive health out rightly.
He said, “There had been family planning services to Nigerians free of charge in our public hospitals, this, the government pledged they would do by funding the procurement of family planning commodities in the public sector.
“So, the commodities are those injectibles, pills, condoms, IUD, implants and all the various methods of family planning. The cost implication amounting to 11 million US Dollars every year, just to buy the commodities. And at the time we had a shortfall of close to $8 million, only $3 million was funded.
“For those of you (the media) who understand how this works, the government supposed to bring money and then our usually donors that help us to procure some of these com
