By Peter Duru, Makurdi

The Benue State Government has charged Health Managers in the state to work together to ensure that the state’s plans are not just documents on paper, but living instruments that drive meaningful change for the people.

The Benue State Commissioner of Health and Human Services, Dr. Yanmar Ortese gave the charge Monday at a four-day Capacity Development Workshop for Health Managers in the state sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in partnership with the Benue State Ministry of Health, with the theme “Towards a Rational, Realistic, Pragmatic and Comprehensive Plan that Informs the Health Budget for the People of Benue State.”

Dr. Ortese noted that in recent years it was seen that health sector financing could not be effective unless backed by robust, evidence-based planning that was rational, realistic and pragmatic.

Represented by the Director of Public Health at the Ministry, Mrs. Esther Menger,
the Commissioner emphasized that health managers, “occupy a strategic position to drive this process from the grassroots up, ensuring that every plan we make is comprehensive, inclusive and capable of translating resources into results.”

He pointed out that the vision of the state under the Governor Hyacinth Alia-led administration “is to build a resilient and responsive health system that works for everyone, especially the most vulnerable. To achieve this, we must continuously strengthen our capacity to plan better, budget wisely, and implement efficiently.

“This workshop therefore provides us a unique opportunity to deepen our knowledge, harmonise our strategies, and align our plans with our budgets in a way that guarantees impact and sustainability.”

He urge the participants to engage actively, learn from one another, and share experiences “that can enrich our collective approach to health planning and budgeting. And let us remember that the ultimate goal is not just to produce plans and budgets, but to improve the quality of life and health outcomes for every citizen of Benue State.”

While thanking partners, facilitators and technical experts for their continued collaboration and commitment to strengthening the health system of the state, the Commissioner charged participants to take the task seriously.

The Executive Secretary of the Benue State Primary Health Care Board, Mrs. Grace Wende noted that the training was aimed at equiping participants with requisite skills and knowledge to do their work effectively, observing that the training aligned with the health system strategic plan.

Mrs. Wende stated that as Health Managers the participants occupy strategic position and were capable of ensuring that every plan made could translate resources into results and urged them to actively participate in all sections of the training.

Speaking to newsmen on the importance of the training, the Desk Officer, Sector Wide Approach, SWAp, for Benue state, Dr. Kuma Gbanan, explained that within the four days of engagement with the Health Managers “we intend to build their capacity in areas like System Thinking, Problem Solving and the Web Based Tool that is new; we will build their capacity in that area too.

“So that by the time they go back to their respective Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, and local governments they will be well positioned to work and we will cast activities in the Annual Operational Plan, AOP, that are evidence based. And at the end of the day, the investment that we have put in, the investment that the Federal Government has put in will translate to palpable results.

“So we are training 80 people who are drawn from the Ministry of Health, the Benue State Primary Health Care Board, the State Health Insurance Agency, the Hospitals Management Board, the Benue State University Teaching Hospital and Benue State AIDS Control Agency.”

Also, the Director Planning Research and Statistics at the Benue State Ministry of Health, Shedrack Akawe, pointed out that “before now we normally had fragmented Work Plan for the MDAs but now we want to make it a single document so as to track every health programme in the state for improved services using the SWAp approach.

“In fact the Federal Ministry of Health, the coordinating Minister to be precise has came up with this programme. After it has been tested in one of the African countries and he saw that the health indices were improved. So the Nigerian government through the Minister also adopted it.

“That is why we are here. You can see that all the MDAs are here, and we are going to have a single document this time around unlike before where each of the MDAs had separate Annual Operational Plans. Now it is going to be a single document that we have for the health sector.”