A’Ibom gov approves release of 2025 health counterfunding

Akwa Ibom State Governor, Umo Eno, has approved the immediate release of the 2025 counterfunding for various interventions in health-related programmes across the state

The State Commissioner of Health, Dr. Ekem John, disclosed this in Uyo while interacting with journalists during the Ministerial briefing held at the Ministry’s conference room on Thursday.

He said the funding covers related health programmes, including health insurance, primary healthcare, immunization, family planning and nutrition.

”His excellency governor Umo Eno, yesterday not only approve he also signed that counterpart funding be released before the end of January 2026 for all our programmes. So, immunisation, family planning, nutrition and health insurance are all covered by that funding, and this year, we are ready to work on these areas”, John said

The commissioner highlighted major policy reform initiatives, noting that during the year under review, the ministry focused on strengthening infrastructure, improving staff welfare, training and enhancing service delivery aimed at producing better health outcomes.

He also used the occasion to highlight sectoral achievements and constraints, claiming that in the area of Leprosy and Tuberculosis control, the state has done very well

”If you look at the TB indices, Akwa Ibom is doing very well; last year alone, we commissioned five portable X-ray machines with the support of the Global Fund. And let me announce that all suspected TB patients in the health facilities where these machines are installed are to have their x-rays free of charge”he said.

In the area of HIV/Aids, the commissioner said that though the ministry has not done too well, there has been improvement in reporting HIV in the state

According to him, ”For HIV/AIDS, this is one place where we have not done too well, but in terms of reporting, there has been an improvement. There are now about 168,000 persons living with HIV/AIDS who have been identified in Akwa Ibom State.

”This is progress because it’s down from over 200,000, which it was before. Two reasons accounted for this: The first is that some people did double-counting in order to get anti-retroviral drugs, so some registered in Eket and still registered in other places again

”But we have able to do an audit, and we arrive at that figure. It’s a good score that 99% of those who have HIV actually know that they have HIV. One of the challenges is that those who have HIV do not even know that they have it ”

Culled from punch