President Bola Tinubu has approved the establishment of the National Health Fellows Programme, with young Nigerian fellows to be engaged in all the 774 local government areas in the country.

This is contained in a statement by Chief Ajuri Ngelale, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, on Monday in Abuja.

Ngelale said that this was in Tinubu’s determination to comprehensively upgrade existing primary healthcare centres and construct over 8,800 new primary healthcare centres across all local government areas in the country.

He said the new centre were for accessible and qualitative healthcare delivery with the provision of new social accountability mechanisms.

Ngelale said that the well-trained fellows would serve as fiduciary agents to monitor and track Primary Healthcare Centre development and performance, which is to be measured against all financial inflows to the centres across the nation.

“The fellowship programme will be domiciled in the Sector Wide Approach (SWAp) coordination office under the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.

“The fellows will be recruited, renumerated, and equipped with appropriate tools to track the performance of Basic Health Care Provision Fund-supported health facilities across the nation.”

Ngelale said that Tinubu, who is the African Union Champion for Human Resources in Healthcare, places faith in young Nigerians, and expects their engagement in this critical nation-building task.

He said this would also include a daily monitoring and tracking of health reforms in their locations, adding that it would usher in a new era of world-class service provision to Nigerians.