The Gombe State House of Assembly has pledged adequate and improved funding to the health sector in order to address the challenges of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) in the state.
The chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Mr Aliyu Baba-Manu, made this pledge in Gombe at a stakeholders’ policy dialogue on the prevention and treatment of SAM as a child right issue.
Baba-Manu said that without proper funding, it would be difficult to address the challenges of the health sector, adding that there should be adequate funding for the sector to make any meaningful achievement in that regard.
He stated that the state government had shown the needed commitment to addressing the challenges in the sector through the payment of counterpart funding to keep partners active in addressing the challenges in the health sector.
According to him, the body language of the present administration shows that the state government cares about the health and also very much interested in addressing the challenge in the health sector.
“We will do everything to make sure that there is not just adequate funding but there is cash backing for all the health-related cases in Gombe State especially malnutrition because that is the foundation of health.
“If you don’t get it right from the beginning, you will never get it right. So we are committed to ensuring that we see improvement in the health sector,’’ he said.
Mrs Lovelyn Agbor-Gabriel CISLAC’s Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Officer said there was a need for all stakeholders to galvanise funding to address the challenge of malnutrition in the state, saying “nutrition is the bedrock for children health.’’
A nutritionist from ABF, Dr Sam Yuwa called on the state government to put in more efforts in eradicating malnutrition in the state through adequate funding.
