The World Health Organization (WHO) has canvassed for Increased systematic approach towards addressing inefficiencies, duplications and overlaps constituting waste in nation’s health systems.
Zonal Coordinator, Southeast Zone, Dr. Chukwumuanya Igboekwu stated this on Wednesday at a two day stakeholders’ engagement and Co-creation Workshop on Cross Programmatic Efficiency Analysis (CPEA), Project.
He also advocated for joint planning between government and donor partners to ensure efficient allocation of available resources.
“We’re advocating for joint planning, between government and the donor partners to ensure all available resources are brought on one table and efficiently allocated.
“Another area is implementation. There’s need for government to implement programmes based on comprehensive situation analysis of the problems.
He said the workshop was targeted at
prioritizing identified inefficiencies across six building blocks of the health system and develop implementable remedial actions towards addressing them.
He said, “CPEA is one of the tools developed by WHO to be used by countries and states as system wide approach to dictate duplications, overlaps and misalignments that encourage wastages in the health systems.
“WHO is supporting this stakeholders’ engagement targeted at increasing awareness about CPEA in the health sector as well as establishing framework for further indepth root cause analysis for government and partners to identify various inefficiencies and ways to overcome them.
“Part of the objectives is also to prioritize those identified inefficiencies across the six building blocks of the health system and develop implementable remedial actions to address them.
“Evidence shows that part of the reasons our health system is not performing sub-uptimally is because of inefficiencies in resource allocation and utilization by health programs
“This results to getting value for the money being spent ocasioned by duplications, two or three partners supporting a particular project, leading to inefficiencies in utilization of scarce health resources.
“The workshop will help key health stakeholders to walk through root cause analysis to identify where these inefficiencies exist in health programs and to dictate duplications and overlaps that constitute waste in the health systems.
Describing Anambra, Imo and Sokoto states as pilot states for the project, the WHO boss said the programme would be extended to other states, drawing lessons learnt from the pilot states to other states.
“WHO has severally encouraged state governments in increasing budgetary allocation to the health sector as human capital development for human capital management.
“We’re canvassing for more systematic approach to making the resources budgeted to the health sector to be more efficiently and effectively utilized.
“If we can identify inefficiencies and entrench the culture of efficiency from the planning stage to the implementation of various projects, unnecesary wastages will be minimized,” he added.
Earlier, Director, Planning, Research and Statistics, State Ministry of Health, Mrs Edith Nwachukwu identified key cross-programmatic inefficiencies as governance, financing, service delivery and health information system.
She said the ministry would continue to emphasize need for stakeholders to prioritize health issues from budgeting to implementation.
“You can’t do anything without health. It is someone that is healthy that can walk on the road or even eat or farm. Health is always priority,” she said.
