Covid-19 and Child and Family Health Services in Nigeria – The Stand of the 23 CSOs in PACaH@Scale

As Nigeria confronts and responds to the Covid-19 pandemic the PACaH@Scale project  is concerned with the emerging disruption and threat to child and family health services and  resources as government at national and state levels shift heath sector funds from existing commitments to fight the pandemic. The CSOs of PACFaH@Scale view the threat of budget cuts to the human capital sector (in particular, the health sector) as displacement  of priorities and evidence o weak commitment to a health sector which was already under-resourced prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. While Personal Protective Equipment (PPE); Ventilators; testing equipment; disinfecting materials must be procured to fight Covid-19,  funds for this procurement must not be extracted  from budgets for accidents and emergencies; for routine immunization consumables and logistics; from family planning commodities and consumables and from the procurement of amoxicillin DT needed to save lives of children with pneumonia. Under-funding and de-prioritization of the health sector over the past years have contributed to the psychological, financial and economic burden of the ordinary Nigerian trying to survive against all odds. The Federal Government of Nigeria signed the Abuja Declaration in April 2001 committing to dedicate (allocate and release) 15% of Annual Budgets to the health sector. Since that time, no Nigerian government has achieved that commitment and before Covid-19, the 2020 allocation to the health sector hovered just about 5%.  Now is not the time to displace funding for routine health sector activities. While more funds must be made available to fight Covid 19 it must not come at the expense of routine health sector expenditure. The Ministries of Budget and Planning at national and state levels are staffed by competent and creative officials, well equipped to identify non-essential and even redundant budget lines that can be cut or removed without touching health allocations. At a time when government has tasked the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Senior Executive Course 42 of 2020 to consider the important theme of Human Capital Development and against the background of the report to the President of the NIPSS, Senior Executive Course 41 of 2019, on expanding Universal Health Coverage (UHC), the health sector cannot and should not be a causality in the fight against Covid 19.