We'll Ensure That Next Administration Shares Our Vision

[Richard Akindele]

President Olusegun Obasanjo has stressed the effectiveness of his Administration's reform agenda, saying that the challenge now before his government was to ensure that the next Administration "also shares in our vision".

Speaking at the conclusion of a two-day retreat on Increasing Life Expectancy in Nigeriain Abuja, on July 8, President Obasanjo said that to meet this challenge, his Administration will "work with the evolving political transition processes at Federal, State and Local Government levels to incorporate our strategies into our party manifestoes and the campaign programmes of our candidates for the elections in 2007."

"We have made significant process at the Federal level, we now need to engage and work with States, Local Government, and other stakeholders in health and other sectors," the President said.

Noting that the challenge of vertical and horizontal integration for service delivery was not peculiar to the health sector, he charged the Federal Ministry of Health to continue to identify "innovations that will move us forward and to incorporate them into the implementation process for the Health Sector Reform Programme."

President Obasanjo pledged that to confront the threat posed to life expectancy in Nigeria by HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria and non-communicable diseases, his Administration will continue "scaling up interventions as agreed in the course of this retreat".

The President had at the opening of the retreat yesterday said that by the diligent implementation of recommendations emerging from it, life expectancy in Nigeria could be increased to 60 years by 2010.

Participants at the two-day retreat broke into six committees, which submitted recommendations on Health Sector Reforms, Impact of Maternal and Child Health, Including Immunization on Life Expectancy, Non-Communicable Diseases, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Control of Epidemics and Emergency Preparedness, Research and its Uses for Improving Life Expectancy.

President Obasanjo also directed that the recommendations of the six groups be collated for priority attention.

Participants at the retreat were drawn from the Federal Ministry of Health and its agencies and parastatals, university teaching hospitals, private hospitals, medical research institutes, and medical and health professional bodies.

Nigeria First.