Hela focuses on fixing health facilities

By PETER WARI
Hela provincial health authority (PHA) is renovating and rebuilding its major health facilities after the 7.5-magnitude earthquake in February.
This has been made possible after a comprehensive engineering assessment concluded with the work estimated to cost K22 million.
Chief executive Dr James Kintwa said that under the PHA reform, it was decided to allocate the health functional grant (HFG) to PHAs.
He said the national Government through the 2018 Budget, allowed Hela PHA to access the health functional grant directly.
Kintwa said according to the National Economic and Fiscal Commission (NEFC), this funding was supposed be used to do rural facilities upgrade and improve service delivery capabilities in rural areas by spending on minimum priority activities (MPA).
He thnaked the national Government for making this significant decision to directly fund rovincial health authorities with the health functional grant.
“The same funding will be used to start the renovation and rebuilding of the earthquake-affected facilities in Hela, and to improve the health status of
the rural population,” Kintwa said.“Funding is now available to health managers instead of staying with politicians and the provincial administration.
“The first piece of work started with improving electricity supply with the installation of three 22kva genset supplied by World Health Organisation at Dauli, Koroba and Fugwa health facilities.
“This will be followed by solar systems and small 5kva gensets to other local facilities procured using the HFG.”