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When the Gombe Health Summit 2025 convened connected October 2-3 astatine the International Conference Centre, Gombe, it did much than assemble policymakers, donors and wellness experts. It became a forum wherever grounds met ambition and wherever a authorities redefined what subnational committedness to healthcare betterment genuinely looks like.
The summit, themed “Transforming the Health System successful Gombe State: Accomplishments, Challenges, and the Next Frontier,” was not a ritual of praise. It was a infinitesimal of stocktaking, 1 that exposed however acold the authorities has travel nether Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya, CON, and however courage, consistency and readying tin alteration the trajectory of healthcare transportation successful Nigeria.
At the bosom of discussions was the Gombe State 10-Year Development Plan (DEVAGOM), the model that has guided the state’s travel toward inclusive growth.
Health, being 1 of the plan’s strongest pillars, has received singular attraction successful policy, financing and implementation.
The summit’s communiqué, released astatine the extremity of the two-day event, documented what galore wellness watchers already know: Gombe is steadily becoming a exemplary for subnational wellness governance. The grounds speaks clearly.
Over the past fewer years, the Inuwa Yahaya medication has revitalized healthcare infrastructure crossed primary, secondary, and tertiary levels; implemented the Biometric Attendance Tracking Technology (BATT) strategy that rooted retired 440 shade workers and saved the authorities N4.5 billion; approved the long-awaited CONMESS and CONHESS wage structures; and established a School of Nursing Sciences to fortify the wellness workforce pipeline.
Even much commendably, the Governor has sustained a 15 percent budgetary allocation to health, a uncommon feat among Nigerian states, portion expanding wellness security sum done the Gombe State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency (GoHealth).
These interventions person translated into measurable improvements successful maternal, newborn, and kid wellness (MNCH) outcomes, greater accountability successful wellness financing, and an wide emergence successful nationalist confidence.
What makes the Gombe communicative compelling is not conscionable its achievements but the honesty with which it confronts remaining challenges. The acme did not gloss implicit the issues, from the shortage of wellness workers successful agrarian communities and anemic health-seeking behaviour to declining donor backing and constricted section authorities committedness to superior healthcare financing. In the communiqué, participants acknowledged these gaps and urged stronger collaboration among stakeholders to prolong the gains and physique resilience. That willingness to self-assess and course-correct reflects a civilization of governance built connected transparency, 1 that Nigeria urgently needs astatine scale.
Perhaps the astir important result of the acme lies successful its forward-looking commitments. The Gombe State Government, according to the communiqué, pledged to:
* Sustain the 15% wellness assemblage allocation successful aboriginal budgets;
* Fully instrumentality the approved wage structures for each wellness workers;
* Strengthen demand-generation done assemblage wellness workers;
* Leverage exertion and information for evidence-based readying and improved work delivery;
* Establish a Health Trust Fund to mobilize home financing; and
* Engage Local Government Authorities to lend to equity funds that grow security sum for the mediocre and vulnerable.
These are not promises made for applause; they are actionable commitments grounded successful strategy. In fact, Gombe’s approach, mainstreaming donor programmes into state-led interventions and aligning each spouse efforts with its Annual Operational Plan (AOP) and DEVAGOM priorities, could precise good service arsenic a nationalist exemplary for coordinated wellness governance.
As Nigeria continues to grapple with systemic challenges successful healthcare, underfunding, encephalon drain, and fragmented work delivery, the Gombe illustration offers a glimmer of what’s imaginable erstwhile imaginativeness meets discipline.
Governor Inuwa Yahaya’s marque of enactment is pragmatic yet people-centred. His content that wellness is not conscionable a work but a catalyst for productivity and quality superior improvement has redefined Gombe’s argumentation landscape.
The 2025 Health Summit whitethorn person ended, but its ripple effects volition endure. The commitments captured successful its communiqué are not specified bureaucratic pledges; they correspond a renewed societal declaration betwixt authorities and the governed, 1 wherever access, equity and accountability basal astatine the halfway of governance.
If Gombe tin support this trajectory, it won’t conscionable stay a exemplary for the North-East; it volition go a notation constituent for however state-level enactment tin thrust Nigeria person to Universal Health Coverage.
In the words of Nigeria’s First Lady,...
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