The Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has trained health leaders and managers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on developing a smart, budget-linked, and data-driven Annual Operational Plan (AOP).

The four-day training, which ended on Saturday in Abuja, was under the National Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative (NSHRII) leadership, health system strengthening, and planning capacity development.

Adedolapo Fasawe, the mandate secretary of the FCT Health Services and Environment Secretariat (FCT HSES), noted that the training marks a significant milestone toward the development of a data-driven and budget-linked 2026 AOP.

According to Ms Fasawe, this will align with the FCT budget and enable administration to draw down on available funds from the Disbursement-Linked Indicators (DLIs).

She explained that more than 70 senior health officials, programme managers, and planning officers from the FCT, area councils, development agencies, and implementing partners participated in the four-day training.

Ms Fasawe described the training as a “bold step” toward strengthening health systems and the development of a budget-linked AOP that would align with government priorities for donors and development partners to key in.

She specifically urged development and implementing partners to align their plans and funding with the priorities and initiatives of the FCT Health Sector Strategic Blueprint (HSSB) and AOP.

Teresa Nwachukwu, the acting director of health planning, research, and statistics at the FCT HSES, said that the training was conducted through the NHSRII and the Sector-Wide Approach (SWAp) coordinating office.

She added that the training would impact the needed skills for the development of the 2026 AOP from the HSSB.

Ms Nwachukwu said the participants were equipped with practical tools for leadership, planning, and governance to drive efficient health service delivery.

The participants were trained on the principles and context of HSSB, SWAp, MAMII, HOPE Governance, and HOPE Health.

The health managers’ capacities were built on health systems, frameworks, and system thinking, HOPE disbursement-linked indicators, problem-solving tools, and bottleneck analysis.

Other areas included intervention prioritisation techniques in healthcare delivery, data literacy for decision-making and performance dialogue, monitoring and evaluation, accountability, research, and learning Plan and AOP development processes.

The participants urged development partners to align funding and programmes with government-led strategies and a joint planning and development of the 2026 AOP to ensure donor inputs directly support FCT-specific health priorities.

Other recommendations included strengthening area council-level financing and the need for enhanced budget releases at the state and area council levels.

They also advocated increased domestic and donor resources for health system strengthening and increased health budgetary allocation in line with the 15 per cent Abuja Declaration of April 27, 2001.

(NAN)