24.4
Lagos
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The Legislative Initiative for Sustainable Development (popularly known as LISDEL) is an independent, non-profit organisation committed to safeguarding a reality that translates to a decent quality of life for Nigerians.
Background
Nigeria’s health sector is rich with several polices and legal frameworks designed to improve Nigeria’s health system outcomes and fast track progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). These policies and legal frameworks were designed to strengthen the country’s capacity to provide quality health care services to Nigerians. However, most of these are fraught with several forms of implementation challenges across all levels. For instance, The National Assembly passed the National Health Act (NHACT) and was signed into law by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in 2014. The National Health Act encompasses various provisions relating to Nigeria’s health system including an innovative health care financing mechanism – the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) which was not appropriated for or implemented until 2018. Even then, the fund is yet to be fully implemented.
The Legislative Initiative for Sustainable Development (LISDEL) as part of its mission to improve delivery and expand coverage of quality healthcare to all Nigerians is implementing the Strengthening government partnership and advocacy for primary health care (SPAG) Project at the Federal and in Lagos, Kaduna and Gombe States. The eighteen months project is targeted at delivering on Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child Health + Nutrition (RMNCAH + N) to optimize primary health care outcomes. The Project will build salience and leverage champions and platforms to institutionalize existing frameworks and policies like the BHCPF and Primary Health Care Under One Roof (PHCUOR) etc.
Implementation of these policies will be improved by strengthening partnerships with policy makers and key government stakeholders and facilitating targeted capacity building, establishing accountability mechanisms, and strengthening advocacy efforts. This investment will also apply a gender lens to identify new voices within target government stakeholder groups and elevate those voices for PHC advocacy through existing platforms.
Primary Outcomes/Results
The primary outcomes of the project are:
Improved government awareness, oversight, accountability, and implementation of the BHCPF in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Health and other government partners
Improved salience and capacity of policy makers and government stakeholders to effectively influence health systems strengthening efforts including BHCPF
Improved inclusion of new voices and champions, particularly women, to drive PHC advocacy priorities within government platforms
The project is multi-inclusive involving collaboration, partnership, and action of a wide range of stakeholders with particular focus to improve public accountability and communication outcomes for PHC policy implementation in Nigeria. The SPAG Project will also facilitate the establishment or revival of mechanisms, enhance capacities of actors for policy implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
Approach
LISDEL will leverage on its wide-partner base – working with CSOs and media organizations to develop advocacy plans and launch strategic advocacy campaigns and outreaches based on issues and priorities identified across the different locations. Various advocacy briefs, factsheets, informatics etc. will be developed and disseminated through inclusive processes, while policy dialogues will be held to chart consensus paths towards achieving the project’s strategic objectives.
Our work with partners, CSOs and media will also facilitate the development of an integrated accountability/tracking mechanism and implementation of existing M&E frameworks for the BHCPF.
The Project will also support the Federal Ministry of Health to develop and implement a knowledge management and communication plan for the BHCPF. These are strategic to build public awareness, improve communication, knowledge and learning and facilitate accountability, transparency, and efficiency of the BHCPF.
LISDEL through the SPAG Project will also enhance salience and capacities of key government stakeholders in the legislative arm of government to effectively apply their statutory functions towards achieving health system strengthening objectives and UHC across the project’s focal locations. The Project will also strengthen accountability mechanisms through the development and use of existing of legislative tools.
The SPAG project will scope and identify new voices, particularly women, who are in leadership positions and build their understanding of, and advocacy capacity to champion PHC and RMNCAH-N priorities.
Women are a majority at the receiving end of inadequate healthcare and the poor health indices and outcomes both at the national and local levels. Due to the peculiar health needs of women, the need to strengthen the system in other to achieve equity and women’s inclusion has become imperative. The new voices and champions who will be drawn from the legislature, executive, CSOs, media and across all government divides and platforms will lead advocacy campaigns to key government stakeholders to reduce maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent morbidity and mortality in Nigeria; and promote universal access to comprehensive MCH, sexual and reproductive health services for adolescents and adults throughout their life cycle.
