Nigeria Minister of Health Cites Importance of Health Workforce Issues

October 2013 by Joseph Eton
TAGS: Health Workers, iHRIS, Joseph Eton, Nigeria

Recently at the 2nd National HRH conference in Nigeria, with the theme “Universal Health Coverage in Nigeria: Role of Human Resources for Health,” the Federal Minister of Health, Professor C.O. Onyebuchi Chukwu, celebrated CapacityPlus for our good works in the area of health systems strengthening.

Minister of Health giving his speech

Just before the minister spoke, our chief of party for CapacityPlus/Nigeria presented a goodwill message and summarized our activities over the past year, ranging from awarding scholarships to over 2,000 students of community health extension work and midwifery, to launching in-service training workshops, to implementing iHRIS for tracking and managing health workers.

In his speech, the minister quoted from a book by Professor Tekena Tamuno, a famous Nigerian historian, stating, “We have won the Nigerian civil war but we have not won the peace of Nigeria, and in order to win the peace we need to fight against diseases, put our health workforce in place, provide quality healthcare services, use globalization to our advantage, and reduce the time of training of health professionals in the country.” The minister included a wonderful commendation to CapacityPlus for our achievements within our one year of existence: “I could not resist initiating the claps for IntraHealth International, implementers of the CapacityPlus project in Nigeria, during their goodwill message.”

I look forward to the next feather we will add to our hat of achievements!

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Photo by Joseph Eton (the Honorable Minister of Health, Professor C.O. Onyebuchi Chukwu giving his speech)