Nigeria is close to establishing the Maternal Mortality Action (MAMA) Fund as part of ongoing negotiations for a US$500 million loan from the World Bank.
This is evident from a Stakeholder Engagement Plan for Nigeria: Primary Health Care Strengthening Programme, which Nairametrics has seen.
For this program, Nigeria awaits approval from the World Bank for a $500 million loan next month.
The initiative is part of the broader US$65 million Investment Project Financing (IPF) of the HOPE Health Programme, which aims to improve access to quality health services across Nigeria.
Why MAMA Fund
The establishment of the MAMA Fund is a critical step in Nigeria’s efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality rates and achieve its human capital development goals.
According to the World Bank document, the MAMA Fund will focus on strengthening primary health care (PHC) across Nigeria, targeting rural and underserved populations.
The $15 million fund will support public and private sector innovations aimed at improving maternal and child health care.
The document states: MAMA Fund ‘investments’ in innovations primarily focus on strengthening primary healthcare (PHC) in lagging and climate-vulnerable states so that they can address legacy issues and ‘prime the pumps’. These types of service delivery innovations aim to expand coverage or quality of services at the population level, with a focus on underserved rural populations.
“The MAMA Innovation Fund is designed to support innovations in the public and private sectors aimed at improving the use and quality of maternal and child health interventions. The establishment and operation of the MAMA Fund will not only support innovations in the private sector aimed at improving the use and quality of maternal and child health interventions, but also partnerships with the public sector to test new approaches or scale up services to improve the delivery of reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNACH) services.
“The fund will support interventions that are critical to ending preventable maternal, newborn and infant deaths. These include midwifery, emergency obstetric and newborn care, surveillance and response to maternal and perinatal deaths, obstetric fistula and other obstetric morbidities, and digital skills and technologies.”
Other important project subcomponents
- The program also provides $15 million for the development, procurement and deployment of a federated healthcare digital enterprise architecture. This component is designed to drive significant digital transformation in the Nigerian healthcare sector by digitizing key health information systems such as the electronic human resource management information system, the National Health Insurance Scheme and electronic health records.
- Another important aspect of the programme is the creation of a coordinated technical assistance platform with a budget of $2.5 million. This component is designed to improve the capacity and sustainability of health interventions across Nigeria.
- The program also focuses on strengthening the strategic purchasing and regulatory functions of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and has an allocation of US$10 million for this purpose.
- The program also includes a US$5 million investment in the implementation of the Public Health Fellows Program. This initiative will establish the National Health Fellows Program, engaging young Nigerian fellows in all 774 local government areas.
- The program also emphasizes the importance of independent verification of its results and allocates US$7.5 million for this purpose. An Independent Verification Agent (IVA) will be appointed to thoroughly evaluate the program’s results and provide a credible analysis of the state and federal governments’ performance under the HOPE-PHC PforR (Program-for-Results).
- It also includes the development of annual health reports and performance rankings with a budget of $2.5 million.
