 Any society is probably as prosperous and as developed and happy as its healthcare system and central to any meaningful development planning. Must be a plan to improve access to quality reliable functional and affordable healthcare for the citizens. Mr. President has in several public statements made it clear that a modern viral and people centric healthcare system was fundamental to his own vision for the socioeconomic growth of our nation. However, the current reality is that the Nigerian health sector and we've heard quite a bit on that from the Minister of Health still carries some critical challenges which have resulted in suboptimal outcomes when compared especially with healthcare systems in more developed jurisdictions of the world. This is due to a variety of factors including fragmentation of healthcare, health service delivery, insufficient healthcare financing, inadequate motivation and poor distribution of health workers, inadequate infrastructure and equipment and relatively low private sector participation. Some of these factors have precipitated significant revenue loss due to growing medical tourism and even the loss of our trained personnel and that is a frightening phenomenon even now. Government has the primary responsibility to address these issues and to put in place the structures and arrangements necessary to boost the efficiency of the healthcare ecosystem, improve healthcare delivery, stem the brain drain of our health personnel and reduce the pressure that we currently have on our foreign reserves, on account of medical tourism. In furtherance of that objective, Mr. President approved the establishment of this Health Reform Committee to commence the development and implementation of a wide-ranging health sector reform program for the country and we already have the terms of reference and there have of course been a good number of attempts to reform the healthcare system in Nigeria and of course many of us who are members designate of this committee are familiar with some of these reform efforts but this particular journey of reforming the Nigerian health sector and we've heard I think quite comprehensively on that from the on the Minister of Health began with the commissioning of a diagnostic needs assessment of the sector and subsequently the National Council on Privatization at its meeting of April 12, 2019 also approved the appointment of consultants to carry out the assignment and this involved a review of previous reform efforts in the sector as well as field visits to 55 tertiary health institutions across the country and some selected subgeneral health institutions. It's perhaps also important to mention that a series of stakeholder consultations were carried out with relevant ministries, departments and agencies, health unions and key stakeholders in the sector. So the report of that comprehensive effort is probably what has brought us to where we are today. As mandated by Mr. President, the Health Sector Reform Committee is tasked with a crucial role of reviewing these reports and staring the direction of the needed reforms. On account of the multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary participation that is required to execute a health reform mandate on the scale and the complexity that we have today, I'm personally keen to ensure that the coordinating office for the reform effort which is domiciled in the office of the vice president will not just have the ministry of health of course the ministry of health is the important partner but also some of the important technical resource persons provided by our partners and of course you know the solid representation also from the committee. The coordinating office will provide technical and administrative oversight of all of the activities of the reform and I intend to further consultations to the honor minister of health as we bring this to fruition. So the next steps and I think the honor minister of health again had presaged some of what this will what will happen is that this committee will then be divided into thematic working groups to take on various aspects of the assignment. We've received commitment of funding support to engage experts who will also be assigned by the secretary to the various teams so in addition to members we would also have sector experts for the thematic groups who will be engaged these will be professionals will be engaged to support the thematic groups themselves. I hope that at the next meeting of the committee which will be convened shortly the proposals for the thematic groupings and terms of reference will be presented for concentration ahead of that ahead of that we will send around these thematic groupings the names terms of reference etc ahead of this meeting so if there comments or questions those can be raised forwarded to the coordinating office and if there's any additional if there are any additional ideas those could also be forwarded but at the next meeting there will be a quick run through of the thematic groupings and what their tasks will be and we'll at least satisfy ourselves that we're on the right track following that each team will commence work and periodic reports will be presented as time goes on for our full committee's consideration. So let me thank in advance all members of the committee for offering their time and resources for this very important national assignment and I hope that just as you committed yourselves to this as time goes on we will of course demand more and more of your time and of course more and more of your expertise and I hope that you will be willing to provide all that expertise but only to say for now that we really all thank you very much for your contribution so far and we hope that we'll see even more dedication and commitment as we go along. Is there for my very special privilege and honor to inaugurate this health sector reform committee for the benefit of the people of Nigeria and to the glory of God. I thank you all for your attention.