BAUCHI, JULY 26, 2016 – Dr Halima Mukkadas, Bauchi State Commissioner for Health, said on Tuesday that the state would access 24 million dollars (N9.12 billion), health credit facilities from the World Bank.
Mukkadas announced this in Bauchi while addressing newsmen at a Rountable on Bauchi State 2015 Health Budget Scorecards.
She explained that the figure was the state’s share from 125 million dollars earmarked by the bank to be accessed by six states in the North East Region in the next five years.
Mukkadas named Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Bauchi, Taraba and Gombe as states to benefit from the gesture.
She further explained that Yobe and Borno would get the lion share while Bauchi, Gombe and Taraba states would get the least.
“Bauchi State will get 24 million dollars and the funds will be channeled directly to the hospitals in the state.
“The disbursement of the funds will be based on performance of each hospital and government will have minimal interference in the disbursement.
“Bauchi is currently hosting one million Internally Displaced Persons and the health facilities in the state are overstretched; so we need the funds to be able to build more health facilities across the state,” Mukadas said.
She said that the state currently had 1,077 primary healthcare centres and intended to build one in each of the 323 wards, especially those communities with 10,000 people.
Mukkadas expressed concern that 2,000 health workers out of the 4,000 trained by the government in 2015 in spite of signing bonds, had absconded.
She said that the affected staff were sponsored and given automatic employment by the government after the training but unfortunately absconded.
According to the commissioner, “we will fetch them and bring them back to serve their bonds and we don’t want to issue out punishment against them at the moment.
“We have written to institutions where they are serving to recall them to come and complete their bond periods.
“We have equally talked to authorities of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH) Bauchi, for the progression of such staff,” she added.
