$300million Lifeline for Primary Healthcare Development in Nigeria?

It has just been made public that the Netherlands is taking up the responsibility of providing funds for the development of primary healthcare for a poor community in Kwara State, Nigeria. The project is part of the Hygeia Community Health Plan. This is being regarded as a dividend of the advent of the Nigerian National Health Insurance experiment. And as if taking a cue from this, yesterday, the Federal Government announced the approval of the Federal Executive Council to make available the sum of 35billion Naira (about $300 million) for the establishment of Comprehensive Health Centers in each of the 774 Local Government Councils of the Federation.
This is good news: that is, if you are reading this post from Australia, Europe, North America, e.t.c where most government policies immediately translate to projects that directly impart the people. The average Nigerian is skeptical, if not out-rightly cynical when such pronouncements are made since many have mastered the art of siphoning public funds. It is called refined thievery!
We find that the most successful health initiatives are those managed by private enterprises that are goal-oriented and result-driven embracing sustainability because of its direct relationship to their reputation. These enterprises crave for and incorporate the input of community. Poor communities cannot abandon the quest for improved health outcomes to government alone especially in societies with inept, mediocre and pathological governance as described by Paul Farmer, the renowned physician, Harvard researcher and medical anthropologist (founding director, Partners In Health. www.pih.org.) in his Pathologies of Power. Poor communities must harness their resources, constructively engage government and ensure that policy papers such as the one just produced by the Nigerian government about primary healthcare development come to fruition. It is an error to sit and wait for the spontaneous realization of primary healthcare development: it will never happen without concerted, collaborative efforts.

Light has come to Arusha!

Thank you, Gillian, for your comment on my last post and for urging me to keep on writing. Your post has given me a renewed impetus to stay the course.
I have seen your blog. It reveals the great work being done to impart the lives of these disadvantaged kids in Arusha. Small efforts make a lot of difference. Only time will tell what difference you have made!
It is worth visiting www.schoolstjude.blogspot.com to see what is being done for 850 kids from the poorest families at the School of St. Jude in Arusha, Tanzania. The photograph shows a nearly completed class building taken in December 2006.