In line with the ‘Change’ mantra of President Buhari’s administration, the Federal Ministry of Health has launched Saving One Million lives Program for Results (SOML-P for R). This initiative is a Federal Government–led intervention effort focused at improving maternal and child health through a result based partnership with States’ Ministries of health.
In a keynote address, delivered at the occasion recently in Abuja, the Minister, Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, said the SOML P for R was based on an approach to structure the flow of resources to pay for results which are desired goals, outcomes and impacts rather than simply paying for processes or reimbursing activity costs.
The Minister explained that the programme which is being funded from a 140 billion Naira ($500 million) credit that had been negotiated by Federal government with World Bank from which $1.5million was disbursed to states and FCT as grants sought to deliver high impact, evidence based and cost effective health interventions based on 6 ‘pillars’, namely:-
Maternal, newborn and child health, childhood essential medicines and increasing treatment of important childhood diseases, improving child nutrition, immunization
malaria control and the elimination of mother to child transmission (EMTCT) of HIV.
He however, the Minister informed that the initiative was not new but building on existing ongoing initiatives seeking to give a new lease of life to the National Strategic Health Development Plan (NSHDP) and State Strategic Health Development Plans (SHDPs) through innovative financing mechanism.
Adewole hinted that the SOML P for R would be implemented by the States’ Ministries of Health based on agreed plan of action with the Project Management Unit (PMU), at the Federal Ministry of Health, under the leadership of the SOML-P for R Steering committee, chaired by the Minister of Health.
The wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, represented by the Senior Special Assistant to Mr. President on Diaspora matters, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa in her goodwill message, urged stakeholders and all Nigerians to imbibe a culture of performance based programming so that results could be achieved within a short time.
Earlier, in his presentation, the Project Manager of the Programme, Dr Ibrahim Kana said that State would be rewarded for their performance based on the objectives indicators using from household and health facility survey as well as achievement of certain process indicators related to implementation of a performance management system.
