The Senior Technical Adviser in the Office of Senior Special Adviser to the President (OSSAP) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Dr Bala Yusuf Yunusa has assured that policies and programmes are in place to ensure that negative indicators are reversed.
Yunusa further assured that the country is on course to attain the SDG3 on children and nutrition before 2030.
The SSA made the pledge on the sideline of an interview with newsmen during the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) engagement with the SDG office on the updates of Health and Nutrition related goals in collaboration with the Save the Children International (SCI) in Abuja.
According to him, Children and nutrition are related in the SDG3 and in some components of SDG2 adding the Ministry of Health is implementing policies and programmes to achieve these.
Yunusa further assured that before 2030, all indicators will be on track adding that the implementation is happening in the Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as they all have a mandate for particular SDGs.
On the overview of Health and Nutrition SDGs implementation in Nigeria, the Office of the Special Assistant to the President of SDGs, Dr. Zakariya Mohammed said health-related SDGs indicators and targets are justifiably broad comprising of the set of 13 targets in SDG3, as well as health elements/indicators and influence across many other SDGs.
He explained that the SDGs promote social determinants of health such as nutrition (SDG 2), education (SDG 4), gender (SDG 5), WASH (SDG 6), employment (SDG 8), reducing inequalities (SDG 10), housing (SDG 11) and healthy environments (SDGs 13–15)
According to him, others are Health-related indicators
and targets are also present in some other SDGs including SDGs1,2,4,5,6,8,10 & 11.
He said the cognizant’s that the determinants of health and also most of the risk factors of disease conditions lie outside the health sector adding that Health is considered as determinant, enabler and outcome of the SDGs efforts and core to human capital development.
He further explained that targets of the Health Goal (SDG3), the SDG3 (13 targets) centered around the key health areas: Reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH); Infectious diseases including HIV.
Others health areas are tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs);Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) including cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes; Mental health and substance use including narcotics and harmful use of alcohol; Injuries/trauma among others .
According to him, this requires reliable data that is key for strengthening the evidence-based SDGs policy, planning, legislation and decision making.
