By Alfred Kollie alfredkolliejr92@gmail.com
The Director General at the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), Mr. Tolbert Nyenswah has wants partners to direct their financial resources to the fragile health system of Liberia, as institutional spending trend from government is low.
Mr. Nyensway said such resources should be target especially in the areas of health workers support, drugs and medical supplies, epidemic control and preventable causes of deaths in the country.
He was speaking recently, when who served as a key presenter and panelist at the International Conference on “Understanding the Economics of Microbial Threats at The National Academies of Sciences in Washington, DC, USA, when he called for more attention in the health sector.
The NPHIL Director General said the top current health financing challenges facing Liberia’s health care system is at a cross-road.
He said the “Free” health care policy is yet to achieve its objective of providing quality health care and ensuring financial protection for the poor continuous stock out of essential medicine at primary health facilities.
Mr. Nyenswah said the current health financing trend in Liberia is scary, noting that only 16% of institutional spending to health comes from the Government of Liberia, while 69% from donors even the donor dollars 46% of it is off budget meaning it does not support the real needs of the health system.
He said 76% of the resources spent in health care are spent on curative care services and only 10% on preventive health.
Speaking Wednesday June 13, 2018 at a gathering on Economics of National Preparedness to Fight against Microbial Threats in Washington DC, Nyenswah used the occasion to draw the attention of traditional health partners that supported Liberia over the past two decades to look at Liberia health situation.
He is however recommending partners to invest in Primary (clinics, health centers) and Secondary (county referral hospitals) health care noting that is the cornerstone to delivering essential package of health services that are in dare need of reinvigorating in Liberia.
The National Public Health Institute said this is in line with the WHO Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 emerged as a major milestone of the twentieth century in the field of public health, according to a press release issued in Monrovia by NPHIL.
The 1978 declaration identified primary health care as the key to the achievement of the goal of health for all which is the twenty-first century Universal Health Coverage.
This, the NPHIL Director General “indicated will benefit the approximately 60% of the 4.5million people in Liberia the poor people that access primary and secondary health care services’’.
The Washington workshop is intended to examine the interaction of economic activity and microbial threats, featuring a range of perspectives on the economic costs of endemic infectious diseases, health systems, emerging biological risks, and antimicrobial resistance, as well as the economic costs of national preparedness and accelerating research and development.
The Liberian health expert said compared to the estimated required investments to build a well-functioning global disease surveillance system and response, the expected annual returns on investment is huge.
He said the indicative resource requirements of Liberia’s resilient health system investment plan after the Ebola crisis is USD489 million up to fiscal year 2016/2017 which fall short of achieving, and an additional USD$1.21 billion for the remaining period up 2012/22.
He said to reemphasize and make this case stronger, supporting the Health Sector of Liberia via-a-vis the National Public Health Institute of Liberia serve to enhance the public health and veterinary systems in the context of one health, to perform core functions that are required to tackle infectious disease outbreaks that occur with increasing frequency in West Africa.
The absence of such a system, he said will result yet again, in a devastation of the already fragile healthcare system in Liberia and constrain the ability of the government to effectively and efficiently deliver key social services, including primary and secondary health services, education, WASH and preventable cases of mortality.
Nyenswah told the gathering, that due to the transboundary nature of infectious diseases, NPHIL will provide the necessary platforms for knowledge exchange, cross-border collaboration and resource sharing with other countries in the sub-region.
Mr. Nyenswah underscored that progress was made in the health sector for the past decade but warned it will regress, if resources are not quickly and speedily mobilized.
He said it should target human resources for health especially salaries for health workers, Drugs and medical supplies that are constantly in short supplies or stock out that face biggest resource gap and investment in the essential package of health services at the primary and secondary level of the health system.
The NPHIL Director General said the closing of the pool fund mechanism in the health sector couple with other resource gap is troubling, worrisome and will further exacerbate the situation.