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President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the establishment of three more orthopaedic hospitals across the country.

Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, disclosed this on Wednesday at the official inauguration of the Primary Health Care(PHC) Leadership Challenge at the State House Banquet Hall, Abuja.

The event was organised by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) in partnership with development partners.

“The president has approved three more national orthopaedic hospitals; one per geo-political zone.

“Northeast has one; the Northcentral has one and the Southsouth has one; in Benin, Jos and Jalingo respectively,’’ he said.

Country Director, Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation, Jeremie Zoungrana, said that the PHC Challenge fund represented a unique opportunity to motivate and publicly recognise ownership and leadership at the subnational level.

He said that the PHC health indicators would be tracked to support the NGF build Governor-level accountability, improve performance management, and enhance investments in critical areas of PHC.

“The challenge fund will also leverage other BMGF investments that focus on improving state-level data ownership, analysis, quality, and use,” he said.

The Minister of Finance, Hajia Zainab Ahmed, also spoke at the event.

She disclosed that a total sum of N471.9 billion had so far been disbursed by the Federal government as a grant to states under the 1.5 billion dollars World Bank-Assisted States Fiscal Transparency Accountability and Sustainability (SFTAS) Programme.

Ahmed said that it was gratifying to note that beyond benefitting from the grants, all the 36 states in the Federation had fully domesticated the fiscal reforms in their public financial management system.

In his speech, NGF’s Chairman, Gov. Kayode Fayemi, said the event buttressed the commitment as governors to building a resilient Primary Health Care System.

He said that the Primary Health Care(PHC) Leadership Challenge aimed to address the bottlenecks in the system as it strove to build a robust public health care system.