The Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire says there is a dire need to deepen collaboration between Health Ministry and the United Nations Funds for Population Activities (UNFPA) as a means of aligning the economic and population growth of the nation.
Ekwi Ajide of our Abuja Bureau reports that the Minister was speaking when United Nations Agency officials paid him and the Minister of State, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora a visit at the headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Health to explore ways for further collaboration on population activities and issues of COVID-19.
The Minister who said the essence of the collaboration is to ensure prosperity which has been one of the major challenges the country is grappling with, wished that visits from UNFPA will be more constant because of the importance of the Agency to his Ministry.
According to him, the need for population management is as important as the need for economic management as there will be no development if population growth is greater than the economic growth, since economic growth should ideally be faster than population growth.
Dr. Ehanire also revealed that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has been working to ensure that the country’s population and economy will be at par.
The Country Rep of UNFPA who also led the delegation, Uller Mueller, had earlier highlighted the need to renew the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Agency and the Federal Ministry of Health for the procurement of contraceptives as it will be expiring at the end of 2020 and also, tackle the demand notice for the payment of outstanding 2019 and 2020 payment of GCCC to the tune of seven point two Million Dollars which the Minister promised to see how it can be settled.
UNFPA also offered to support the country with PPEs, while on issues of Gender Based Violence, the head of UNFPA delegation described it as an area that needs Federal Ministry of Health’s urgent intervention.
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