Tinubu approves establishment of National Health Fellows Programme

Kunle Sanni

President Bola Tinubu has approved the establishment of the National Health Fellows Programme, with young Nigerian fellows to be engaged in all the 774 local government areas in the country.

This was contained in a statement Monday issued by Ajuri Ngalale, a spokesperson to the president.

According to Ngelale, the initiative complies with the administration’s goal of building over 8,800 new primary healthcare facilities nationwide and completely renovating the nation’s existing ones in order to provide high-quality, easily accessible healthcare along with new social accountability frameworks.

He said the well-trained fellows will serve as fiduciary agents to monitor and track Primary Healthcare Centre development and performance, which is to be assiduously measured against all financial inflows to the centres across the nation.

“The fellowship programme will be domiciled in the Sector Wide Approach (SWAp) coordination office under the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. The fellows will be recruited, remunerated, and equipped with appropriate tools to track the performance of Basic Health Care Provision Fund-supported health facilities across the nation.

Ngalale said President Tinubu, who is the African Union Champion for Human Resources in Healthcare, places faith in young Nigerians, and expects that their engagement in this critical nation-building task, which also includes a daily monitoring and tracking of health reforms in their locations, will usher in a new era of world-class service provision to all Nigerians in every part of the country.