The Federal Government has expanded the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF) to cover an additional 5,000 primary healthcare facilities, bringing the total number of facilities supported under the programme to about 13,000.
The government also announced a quarterly disbursement of N40.7 billion to states under the fund, alongside plans to recruit frontline health workers and extend health insurance coverage to 90,000 vulnerable Nigerians.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja while briefing journalists on the outcome of a meeting of the Ministerial Oversight Committee on BHCPF implementation.
Pate said the additional facilities were selected based on equity considerations, including disease burden, population distribution and proximity to healthcare services.
He attributed the increase in funding available to the programme to the Federal Government’s fiscal and macroeconomic reforms, noting that monthly contributions to the fund had nearly doubled.
The minister, however, urged state and local governments to increase their investment in primary healthcare, stressing that the Federal Government could not sustainably finance the system on its own.
He said the success of the programme depended on a coordinated national approach, with all tiers of government fulfilling their respective funding responsibilities.
Pate also disclosed that the government planned to recruit frontline health workers using savings generated by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA).
According to him, funding for the workers would gradually be transferred to state and local governments over the next three years to address staffing shortages while ensuring that subnational authorities take responsibility for sustaining the workforce.
The minister further advocated the use of digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, to improve transparency and accountability in the management of public healthcare funds.
He noted that manual and paper-based record-keeping made it difficult to establish whether funds released to health facilities were translating into services for patients.
Digital tools, he said, could help track expenditure, detect irregularities and provide evidence of how public funds were spent.
Pate added that appropriate cybersecurity safeguards would be necessary to protect sensitive information as the government adopts technology to strengthen oversight of healthcare spending.
