Nigeria is preparing to launch the Maternal Mortality Action Fund as part of ongoing negotiations for a $500 million loan from the World Bank.
The initiative is part of the broader Nigeria: Primary Healthcare Provision Strengthening Program.
In the Stakeholder Engagement Plan, the country anticipates World Bank approval for the loan next month.
The $65 million Investment Project Financing under Nigeria’s HOPE Health Program aims to enhance access to quality health care nationwide.
This MAMA Fund initiative is a key component of the broader effort to reduce maternal and infant mortality as well as improve healthcare services across the country.
The World Bank has stated that the MAMA Fund will allocate $15 million to strengthen Primary Health Care services in Nigeria, particularly targeting rural and underserved areas.
The fund will support innovations in both the public and private sectors, with a focus on enhancing maternal and child health interventions across the country.
The document read “MAMA fund innovation “investments” is focused primarily on Primary Health Care (PHC) strengthening in lagging and climate vulnerable States, allowing them to address legacy issues and “prime the pump”. These types of service delivery innovations would aim to expand coverage or quality of services at the population level with an emphasis on under-served rural populations.
“The MAMA Innovation Fund will be designed to support public and private sector innovations aimed at increasing utilization and quality of maternal and child health Interventions. The establishment and operation of the MAMA Fund will support not only private sector innovations aimed at increasing utilization and quality of maternal and child health interventions, but also partnerships with the public sector to test new approaches or scaling up services for improving the delivery of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (RMNACH) services.
“The fund will support interventions critical to ending preventable maternal, newborn, and infant deaths including midwifery; emergency obstetric and newborn care; maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response; obstetric fistula and other obstetric morbidities; digital capabilities and technologies.”
The program earmarks $15 million for the development, procurement, and implementation of a federated digital-in-health enterprise architecture.
This initiative aims to spearhead digital transformation in Nigeria’s health sector by digitizing critical health information systems, including electronic human resource management, national health insurance, and electronic health records.
The program also emphasizes the importance of independent verification of its results, allocating $7.5 million for this purpose. An Independent Verification Agent will be hired to conduct thorough assessments of the program’s outcomes and provide credible analysis of the performance of both state and federal governments under the HOPE-HOPE-PHC PforR (Program-for-Results).
