The National Council On Health has approved a new national health policy and it is expected to be sent to Federal Executive Council for approval.
This was made known by the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, who said that the policy covers the essentials of ensuring the reduction of maternal and child mortality, wider immunization coverage and better control and prevention of public health emergencies.
Prof. Adewole also mentioned that a new strategy to address the surgical need of indigent Nigerians is now being implemented under the rapid result initiative.
According to him, plans are being put in place to ensure that poor Nigerians that otherwise would not have been able to afford surgical expenses will now be able to access such surgical procedures for free.
“There are so many poor Nigerians all over the place with surgical ailments and nobody is looking after them and we therefore conceived the idea of the rapid result initiative.
“We selected 10,000 of them to start with this year. So, 10,000 free surgeries for poor Nigerians. The only qualification is that you must be poor”, he said.
He elaborated further by saying that 46 federal tertiary health institutions have been identified to handle the scheme by screening the applicants and performing the surgeries.
