Attachments
Highlights
States Ministry of Health for Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY) and the humanitarian health partners have continued to provide emergency health interventions which is guided by the sector’s strategic objectives: providing access to lifesaving responses, mitigating health risks, and advancing primary health care for universal health coverage. The sector continues to support the three states to map and mitigate the effect of the partners’ defunding:
Service delivery support: On January 20, 2025, an executive order mandated a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review. By January 24, stop-work orders were issued for existing grants and contracts. On January 29, an emergency humanitarian waiver allowed limited restart of life-saving assistance, but lacked clear implementation guidance, disrupting humanitarian programs. Stop-work orders remain for other development, global health, and life-saving activities, impacting health services in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe (BAY) states. Health Sector Coordination for Northeast Nigeria assessed the impact of aid suspension.
The key findings reveal that out of 58 partners, 41 responded (71%), with 12 partners, including 8 key ones, being affected. This has resulted in approximately 1.88 million beneficiaries being impacted, with $16.04 million worth of projects affected. Additionally, 331 Primary Health Care (PHC) facilities and 55 mobile teams have been impacted across the BAY states.
The immediate impacts include program disruptions, with both lifesaving and non-lifesaving activities suspended, staff facing job security concerns and layoffs due to unpaid salaries, communities expressing uncertainty and fear about service continuity, and significant financial struggles in paying staff wages and covering operational costs.
The operational implications include loss of efficiency due to disruptions affecting deadlines and service delivery, service gaps resulting from critical health services being disrupted and impacting treatment adherence, potential regulatory issues requiring additional resources to maintain compliance during inactivity, and a risk to reputation as trust with local communities may erode.
The long-term impacts may include a need for strategic adjustments, such as reevaluating organizational goals and initiatives, risks to future funding that could compromise financial sustainability, strained partnerships affecting ongoing projects and associations, and declining staff morale due to job insecurity and funding uncertainties.
Additionally, the Stop-Work Order is expected to severely impact maternal and child health, disease outbreaks, and community well-being. Disruption of Nutrition and WASH services will inadvertently lead to increased malnutrition and health risks. Disease outbreaks are expected to rise due to suspension of preventive activities, placing a significant burden on healthcare systems. As a mitigation measure, the sector is actively engaging and working with critical government stakeholders to develop a holistic approach which will address identified gaps, occasioned by the defunding.
National Capacity Building: To ensure efficient data management during the implementation of the HNRP 2025, 90 data and program managers were capacitated through a workshop on Health Sector Annual Review of Humanitarian Response Plan 2024, and Data Collection Tool Development in BAY States.