Leadership (Abuja)
Aminu Imam
3 October 2008
The World Bank Board of Executive Directors on Wednesday approved additional financing, totaling US$140 million (about N16.8 trillion) in IDA Credits, for two health sector projects in Nigeria.
The first, supplementing the Partnership for Polio Eradication Project, will provide an additional credit of US$50 million for polio eradication, building on an earlier project, approved in April 2003 for US31 million. Polio is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, which can infect and debilitate the central nervous system.
There is no cure for polio and it can only be prevented through immunisation. Polio vaccine, given multiple times, almost always protects a child for life. At present, the presence of the polio virus in Nigeria represents a threat to the regional and global eradication effort as the virus has spread from this area to other countries, most recently to Chad, Benin and Niger. In 2007, Nigeria accounted for 22 percent of the wild polio virus cases globally and 78 per cent of the cases across the African continent.
Specifically, the IDA resources will fund around 60 per cent of the cost associated with the procurement of Oral Polio Vaccine. The funding will also ensure that the Polio Eradication Initiative continues to contribute to institutional and capacity strengthening in the health sector at all levels of government in Nigeria, and in particular, the delivery of immunisation services and disease surveillance.
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Lets hope that this visionless Yar knows what to do with the $140 Million funding. It seems to me that foreigners care more about the plight of our poor than this pretender of a "servant-leader" whose first act as President was to cancel OBJ's plan to construct health centers in every local govt areas of the federation so he can prove to the world that he is a man of his own and that he is in charge -of what? a cabal of "pickpockets" and "armed-robbers"? Such a cavalier approach coming a sickly president that seeks his own primary care & treatment from abroad is beyond reason to me unless he just doesn't get it that he is not a King but a head of our Civil Servants - a position he holds at the will, whims ad caprices of the people. Your days are numbered.