All eyes were on newly appointed Minister of State for Health Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate as he presented his vision of health for Nigeria: 1,000,000 lives saved and quality of care measurably improved. He expertly laid out four pillars to achieve this goal: expanding basic services; disease prevention (particularly through scaling-up Hib and pneumococcal vaccination); increasing quality of care via improved clinical governance; and unlocking the health sector’s market potential via increased public and private investment.
One of the special reasons for the excitement in the room at the “Innovative Approaches to Expanding Health Care Services in Nigeria” meeting on September 21 at Africare in Washington, DC, was the fact that many of the attendees, myself included, knew and had worked with Dr. Pate personally.
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