COVID-19: WAHO TASK ECOWAS LAWMAKERS ON DOMESTIC HEALTH FINANCING

The West African Health Organization (WAHO) has called on ECOWAS Parliamentarians to champion the inclusion of Domestic Health Financing Fund in the budget of Member States which will serve as support in the fight against COVID-19 Pandemic across Region.

Prof. Stanley Okolo, Director General of WAHO made this request while addressing Plenary at the opening of the Parliament virtual Second Extraordinary Session.

Okolo stated that for West Africa to handle health essentials, there is a need for Member states to strive in implementing the Abuja declaration on allocating 15 percent of National Budgets to the health sector as it will go a long way in acquiring COVID-19 Vaccines and other facilities.

Underlining the efforts of WAHO in the struggle against COVID-19, Okolo said that WAHO before emergence of the pandemic had set up a disease surveillance and preparedness Architecture.

“We have what we called national public health institutions in all our countries, we set up reference laboratories in some countries among other preparative measures. Starting from the infrastructure we had, beginning from when we have 2 Laboratory designated for testing Coronavirus, we now have 107 laboratory across the Region, so we are decentralizing and pushing countries to do more”.

Continuing, he said “WAHO has gone out to raise money, ECOWAS Commission gave us about 2 Million dollars and we have reap over funds of about 7.8 Million dollars, ECOWAS and WAHO between us have raised over 9 million dollars.

“We cannot do all this with only partners funding us, therefore, domestic health financing is really key, and we need to ensure that every dollar is utilised appropriately" He said.

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