CSJ Working To Improve Health Outcomes in Sokoto Through DAI’s Budgeting For PHCs Project

This year, the Centre for SociaL Justice (CSJ) will be working to improve health outcomes in Sokoto State under Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI), the implementation of the USAID Nigeria, State Accountability, Transparency, and Effectiveness (State2State) project.

The programme is focused on budgeting for Primary Health Care (PHC) as an entry point for improving universal health coverage in Sokoto State. PHC is the first point of contact of an individual with the health system.

The overall goal of the programme is to contribute to improvement in universal health coverage in Sokoto State through reforms of the PHC.

The project has 3 objectives: (1) to engage for the improvement of service delivery in primary healthcare through the budgeting process (2) to build the capacity of state and non-state actors on transparency, accountability and effectiveness in the primary healthcare delivery and budgeting process (3) to increase advocacy, civic and media engagement on improving primary healthcare services. These will ultimately improve Sokoto State’s movement towards universal health coverage and the realisation of SDG 3 and the goals of the National Health Policy (NHP). These objectives address the identified problems of poor primary health care indicators which are far off from the requirement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), National Health Policy, etc. the other challenges are poor funding and low domestic resource mobilisation for health.

The programme will be run as a collaboration between state and non-state actors in a loose network of a cluster with Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) as the hub or anchor. The idea is to leverage the competencies, capacities, knowledge, experience and skills of a range of stakeholders in the demand and supply side of PHC to galvanise action for positive change and this will guarantee that we meet the goal and objectives of the program.