El-Rufai stated this at the operationalization of the Saving One Million Lives – Programme for Results in Kaduna on Thursday.

As part of the state government efforts at making health care accessible to people at the grassroots, he said that the state has embarked on renovation, equipping and staffing of one Primary Health Care Centre per ward in the state.

“We are working on 255 PHCs and 23 comprehensive health centre in each Local Government headquarter across the State. We have awarded contract to a company to equip all the PHCs with the necessary equipment. we are also working towards improving the secondary facilities,” he said.

Earlier in his keynote address, the Minister of health, Professor Isaac F. Adewole described the SOML PforR as a Federal Government led intervention to improve maternal and child health through a result-focused partnership with the State Ministries of Health and crash maternal mortality to the barest minimum.

According to him, It is designed to facilitate and to structure the flow of resources to pay for results, which are, desired goals, outcomes and impacts rather than simply paying for processes or reimbursing activity costs.

The program which seeks to catalyse change in the way health business is done he said is being financed by a $500million World Bank credit to the FG of Nigeria. “The resources are then disbursed as grants to states based on performance,”

“Of the total sum available for disbursement, states are entitled to 82% as incentives for improved performance under the various Disbursements Linked Indicators (DLIs). Each state is rewarded for improvements in performance from their own baseline, which means, each state will compete against its previous baseline,” he said.

To access the grant, the Minister noted that states must improve performance of health outcomes from baseline on an annual basis while he recalled that a one-off initial investment grant of $1.5million was disbursed to states in July, 2016.

On their part, the National Team Leader of the Maternal Newborn Child Health (MNCH2) Dr Salma Anas Kolo pledged their support to Nigeria to reduce maternal death and improve child survival in any way possible.

Other partners who spoke at the program are those of the World Bank, WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA and they equally promised to support any program whatsoever that will reduce mother and or child mortality.