FCTA HOLDS 2026 JOINT ANNUAL REVIEW
By: Doris Jonah and Chukwunonso Chukwurah
In its continuous effort to improve health indices, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has convened the 2026 Health Sector Joint Annual Review (JAR) with the theme: “From Data to Delivery: Closing the Gaps and Saving Lives”.
The two-day meeting kicked off on Wednesday, 15th July, 2026 at Wuye District with participants from the FCT Health Sector, Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) and Development partners coming together to deliberate on health performance data in order to chart an improvement course.
To officially declare the 2026 JAR session open, the Mandate Secretary FCT Health Services and Environment Secretariat (FCT-HSES) Dr. Adedolapo Fasawe said that, the 2026 theme is deliberate, timely and mirrors FCT situation because “FCT has moved past the era of counting activities to counting lives saved through health activities and initiatives put in place to tackle health challenges in the territory”.
Dr. Fasawe who was represented by the Acting Director General FCT Hospitals Management Board (HMB) Dr. Abubakar Ahmadu reteirated the importance of JAR describing it as an annual moment of truth to reflect on previous data so as to make sustainability and improvement plan as the case may be.
According to the Mandate Secretary, the 2026 JAR will focus on the 3 documents provided by FMoH and Sector Wide office on “FCT Health Sector Scorecard 2025: with performance tracker against National Health System Roadmap Initiative (NHSRII) commitments, Frequent Assessment and System Tools Resilience (FASTR) to report on bottleneck analysis and identify where the system is leaking and Health Management Information System (HMIS) / District Health Information System 2 (DHIS2) Annual Report on facility data -the real story from Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs) and hospitals” respectively.
More so, Dr. Fasawe noted that the three documents reveals areas of strength, weakness and challenges that needs to be worked upon giving instances of progress in FCT where “Scorecard shows improvement in first Ante Natal Care (ANC1) coverage resulting to improved facility deliveries thanks to health workers whilst HMIS confirms what Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) audits have flagged: irregular funds, drug stockouts, and poor data quality undermining service delivery in too many facilities” she noted.
As such, the Mandate Secretary stated that HSES under the leadership of the Honourable Minister of FCT Barr. Nyesome Wike will prioritize “tracking less but better, more focused SWAP monitoring by Health Planning Research and Statistics (HPRS) on 3 leverage indicators: first Post Natal Care (PNC1-24hr) percentage of PHCs with eight ANC components and Predictability of BHCPF funds because if these three moves, Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) and Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) will move,” she added.
Again, Dr. Fasawe highlighted “Owning collective gaps” as another priority area HSES will look into based on other factors that contribute to health data like; roads, education and finance.
She added that “Rewarding performance” will also be prioritized in order to encourage health workers who are at the fore of closing gaps and moving margins on health charts stressing the need to escalate blocked areas posing challenges to positive outcomes.
Equally, the Mandate Secretary called on Development Partners to align all support towards these leverage indicators so as to boycott parallel systems and she urged Area Councils to compete on changing results for better outcomes rather than making excuses while HPRS and other Facility Managers were charged on ensuring quality data to reflect reality and not just count because “data without action is just numbers” she mentioned.
In his keynote address, the Technical Assistant to the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare on Sector Wide Approach (SWAP) coordinating office Dr. Ashiru Adamu Abubakar who was represented by Dr. Muhammad Rabiu said that, the theme is timely and compelling because the challenging health issues requires timely data collection.
Dr. Abubakar stressed the need to strengthen partnership which he described “as the greatest strength to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC)” and he urged participants to use JAR to constructively engage in discussions that will improve PHCs and maternal mortality thereby improving statistics which according to him translates to saving and impacting lives.
Further more, the Acting Director HPRS Pharmacist Samson Eriba in his remarks mentioned that the main objective of JAR is to ” assess performance of state Health Sector against agreed indicators, targets and Annual Operational Plans (AOPs) with focus on equity, quality and coverage, track the implementation status of resolutions and recommendations agreed upon during previous JAR and other performance dialogue, identifying persistent bottlenecks and unfinished business”.
He also added that, promoting mutual accountability among Government Institutions, Development Partners, Civil Society Organizations and all Health system stakeholders through transparent, evidence based dialogue is another important objective of JAR.
Earlier in his goodwill message, the World Health Organization (WHO) FCT State Coordinator, Dr. Alkasim Musa Jibrin noted that the theme acknowledge that gaps still exist that needs to be bridged in order to influence decision making, increase financing especially in PHC and WHO remains committed in supporting FCT to achieve better outcomes.
