By Ado Hassan, Sokoto
THE Sokoto Accountability Coalition on Maternal Health(SACoM), a platform of civil society organisations and journalists has secured membership in four health related technical committee groups in the state Ministry of Health.
The two groups included the – ’ Saving One Million Lives Steering Committee ‘ Healthcare Financing Technical Working Group, Routine Immunization Technical Working Group and Routine Immunization Financing Working Group respectively.
The essence is to ensure the application of accountability mechanism in the activities and programs of the state Ministry of Health and State Primary Healthcare Development Agency directly under its supervision.
“Its main thrust is to influence a quarterly interactive forum to be tagged (#OpenSMoH), a formal forum and catalyst that will encourage and build an avenue for the coming together of senior government officials, CSOs and Media for budget performance review and actions in addition to provoking a dependable strategic advocacy to political actors with a view to adequately influence the domistication of the principles of transparent spending and timely release of finances in the health sector.”
The development according to Mu’azu Muhammad, SACoM’s Knowledge chair following a formal visit Wednesday to the state Commissioner for Health, Dr. Balarabe Shehu Kakale and the Executive Secretary of Sokoto State Primary Healthcare Development Agency by the team of the coalition.
However, Kakale who lauded the efforts of Community Health Research Initiative(CHR) under their Mac Arthur Foundation’s supported project; Strengthening Accountability Mechanisms for Maternal Health in Nigeira(SAMiN), for supporting the formation of the coalition in the state said” I must commend your efforts at strengthening the active collaboration initiative to improve and support the activities of the health sector in the state for positive performance”, Kakale stated.
In her earlier remarks on behalf of SACoM team, the representative of the Co-chair of the coalition, Hajia Ubaida Bello Muhammad thanked the Commissioner for acknowledging the coalition as a team player in the health sector- stressing that, the coalition was formed in order to advocate for increases in yearly budgetary allocations and timely release of funds for maternal health related programs in the state.
She assured the Commissioner of the coalition’s resolve to support every step that would effectively enhance the performance of the state health sector towards realising service delivery to the people through objective and responsive monitoring for good governance.
” Ours is to promote healthy, transparent, accountable mechanisms that would be sustained to ensure increase budgetary allocation, analysis as well as performance for the health benefit of the people via tracking of routine health related activities in the state”, she explained.
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