GGT Advocates Renewable Energy to Boost Healthcare Services

GGT Advocates Renewable Energy to Boost Healthcare Services

The Good Governance Team (GGT) Nigeria, said that the deployment of renewable energy solutions for the electrification of health facilities will bring about improvement in the delivery of quality healthcare services at the most basic level, across the country.

According to GGT, clean, sustainable, reliable and uninterrupted electricity supply will allow for 24/7 operation of Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs), and also supports motorized water supply within the premises of health facilities.

Mallam Tunde Salman, who is the Convener of the platform, made these known, in his address at a “Breakfast Meeting on Mapping Policy Gaps in Electrification of Primary Health Facilities for Functional Healthcare in Nigeria,” in Abuja.

He said since March 2020, GGT Nigeria has been implementing a project aimed at promoting the mainstreaming of renewable energy in PHCs electrification, adding that the overall objective of the project was to drive the needed policy and legislative change to fill existing gaps in electrification of PHCs facilities.

“The specific project activities include the review of relevant health policies and law in order to identify the gaps in the provision of health infrastructure functionality, especially as it related to power supply. Another is building a case for the mainstreaming of renewable electricity for PHCs for consideration and implementation by relevant actors and decision makers,” Salman added.

According to the GGT Nigeria Convener, there are over 34,173 health facilities across the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, which comprise 30,098 PHC facilities; 3,992 secondary facilities and 83 tertiary facilities.

He however, said the ability of these facilities to provide certain services round the clock and meet the health needs of the people is significantly constrained by appalling grid-electricity supply as most of the facilities, especially PHCs are forced to shut down before nightfall due to lack of electricity to operate nightshifts.

GGT is a civic platform with over a decade rich experience in policy research around issues of public finance management (PFM) reforms and health financing in Nigeria.

Convened by Mr. Salman in 2007, the platform which started as a youth initiative has made invaluable contributions to many catalytic civic engagements for policy and legislative interventions, anti-corruption campaigns and sustainable development.

By PRNigeria