EXPLAINER: Five things to know about Nigeria’s basic healthcare fund allocation

Basic Healthcare Provision Fund is a provision of the National Health Act to donate funding to improve access to primary health care for all, particularly the poor

Basic healthcare is one of the ways the masses directly feel the impact of the government. Recently, Nigeria allocated provision funds for basic healthcare.

Here are 5 things you should know about the allocation.

The Fund

The Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF) is a federal government initiative through which 1 percent of Nigeria’s consolidated annual revenue and partner resources are deployed to guarantee a defined package of care; provide operational budgets for PHCs and support accident victims across selected highway belts around the country.

It is a provision of the National Health Act to donate funding to improve access to primary health care for all, particularly the poor.

To say explicitly, the fund is derived from or financed by an annual grant from the federal government of Nigeria of not less than 1 percent of the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF), grants by international donor partners, and/or funds from any other source, inclusive of the private sector.

The NHIS

Since the BHCPF is a fund, it must of necessity have gateways for disbursement.

Fifty percent of the BHCPF is disbursed through the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) via a pathway to be called the NHIS Gateway, for the provision of Basic Minimum package of health services (BMPHS) to citizens in eligible primary and secondary health care facilities.

The NHIS is one of the health financing options adopted by Nigeria for improved healthcare access, especially for low-income earners. It is to provide social health insurance in Nigeria where health care services of contributors are paid from the common pool of funds contributed by the participants of the Scheme.

Kano State

In the recently published BHCPF allocation to states by the Federal Ministry of Health, a total of N28.6 billion was allocated to the 36 states in Nigeria, and the FCT, with Kano State receiving the highest allocation of N1.6 billion.

FCT

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) received the lowest funding with an allocation of N393.7 million.

However, Abuja did not receive the lowest allocation on NHIS gateway as its N297.1 million fund surpasses that of 12 other states that had more basic healthcare funds than it.

The Twist

One would have expected states with more allocation to have the highest number of persons covered. However, the twist about the publication is that some states with lower funding than others are estimated to have more coverage.

Jigawa State for example, with N1.18 billion, a 4.64 percent decrease from Katsina’s N1.2 billion is estimated to be covering 60,846 persons, a 7.5 percent increase from Katsina’s 56,279 people coverage.

Kano received the highest allocation with N1.6 billion, closely followed by Katsina and Jigawa with N1.2 billion and N1.18 billion respectively.

The sharing formula of the funds is not provided in the document.

Damilola Odifa

Damilola Odifa is a graduate of Mass communication department from the University of Lagos with nearly 2 years experience in content writing. She currently works as a journalist in BusinessDay Media, West Africa's leading provider of business intelligence and information, where she writes on the business of agriculture, and the environment.

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