ACIOE Associates hosted The Healthcare Excellence RoundTable at the recently concluded Medic West Africa Health care exhibition. The interactive round table was held at Shiro Restaurant at the Landmark Center Lagos.

Beginning with a keynote address from the Honorable Commissioner Borno state, Prof Baba Gana. He saluted the distinguished Commissioners and appreciated ACIOE Associates, the organizers, for putting the forum together. He commended the participants and attendants of the session themed ‘Unlocking the Healthcare Value chain at Sub-national levels’ he discussed that the theme of the session resonates with the current challenges and healthcare sector in Nigeria, a call to of the nation to leverage our rich resources, to cultivate, innovate and optimize resources as we explore tangible pathways to unlock Nigeria’s value chain.

Prof. Gana stated the potential of public private partnerships cannot be understated in unlocking the healthcare value chain, leveraging expertise of both sectors to collaborate and enhance healthcare furnished by our rich untapped natural resources that abound in our states that will allow the states burst with potentials from within. He discussed Borno’s collaboration with a donor partner to set up a Tombrown manufacturing factory to mitigate nutrition constraints and improve healthcare delivery and production of food and drugs while unlocking the value chain in in finance and risk management as well.

Dr Abdu Mukhtar National Coordinator for Presidential Initiative for unlocking the Healthcare Value Chain spoke about the need for states to participate in the unlocking value chain process. He iterated that the states and potential manufacturing businesses could now access funding as the initiative had secured $1 billion dollars from the AFREXIM bank, stating that funding is not a problem for manufacturing companies in pharmaceuticals, Rapid Diagnostic Tests, and manufacture of bed nets, mosquito nets.

He further commented that the states are imperative if we must unlock the healthcare value chain and responsiveness to investors needs to be prioritized, as well as attention to ease of business indicators and incentives to encourage and facilitate collaboration, partnership between investors and the states.

Participating Commissioners of Health also highlighted the preparedness of the states to do business and highlighted the governors’ priorities in improving the healthcare system in the state, pointing out the Government’s interest in improving the Human resource for health and strengthening strategies in the states by allocating a significant amount of the state budget to healthcare.

Some highlights of the forum include Plateau States’ comment that the Drug and Management agency is at 90% completion, with the mandate to implement manufacture and drug production in the state and improve employment levels. Kaduna state’s recent launching of the OSD plant in Kaduna and the strong collaboration the state is going to enjoy with the PVAC team and spoke about the government commitment to revitalize the secondary healthcare in the state. The commissioner highlighted the renumeration review of healthcare professionals in Kaduna within the first three months of the administration, the maintained health budget of 15.05% with focus on HRH, and identifying gaps needed to fix the increasing exit of healthcare professional.

Dr Obidike Afam, Commissioner of Health Anambra state highlighted the great potential to leverage drug distribution with Head bridge Onitsha as an example of the value chain we can optimize in drug production and distribution. In conclusion, he called for strategic, innovative HRH approaches to tackle the challenges in the healthcare sector as we unlock the value chain at the sub national levels.

Dr Daniel Gyan representative of the Minister of Health Ghana, commended the various states and the federal ministry of health for their valuable contributions, stating that Ghana is understudying the healthcare sectors approach to unlocking the value chain and alluded that it was a giant stride towards unlocking west Africa’s healthcare value chain.

Mr Ekenem Isichei rounded up the event with an appreciation to everyone who participated at the forum urging the commissioners and other participating members to leverage the connections and collaborate to unlock the value chain at the different levels to enrich and optimize Nigeria’s healthcare delivery capacity.