By lduozee Paul, Benin
To ensure Edo people, particularly women and children enjoy good health services, the state government says it has commenced the rebuilding of primary healthcare centres across the state..Commissioner for Health, David Osifo said the state government has already completed building of 20 primary healthcare centres and just start building another 50 primary healthcare centres.
Osifo’ s who, made the disclosure atan event organized by the state government in conjunction with key stakeholders retreat in the health sectoron Save One Million Lives Programme for Results’, said the core goal of the retreat is to brainstorm onhow to make the health sector modern sothat citizens can have access to quality health services.
“We are here doing work plan to streamline what we are going to do, our activities for 2019. By the time we finish, the fund will be available for us to do the programme. We do not want to do the programme anyhow, but to have a goal in mind, that isthe essence of the retreat we are having now.
“We have built20 primary healthcare centres and we are currently building 50 primary healthcare centres. All of them have been adopted by the federal government. The money is already available, what is left is just for us to conclude the process. By the grace of God, at the end the programme, the healthcare of our women and children will improve,” the commissioner assured.
Addressing the health stakeholders, the nationalprogramme manager, ‘Save One Million Lives for Results’, lbrahim Kana urgedthem to develop and exhibit a
change of mindset to achieve needed results. He said what they are aiming at is how to get good results, and appealed to them to work together to achieve the goal. He said Edo State has a bright future to gain from the programme.
should be giving N50,000 naira every month for maintenance of facilities and proper upgrading of hospital equipment in the state.
He lamented that despite efforts from the federal government to make vaccines available in all government clinics and hospitals, the vaccines are not getting to the people, especially women and children but are being stolen by some set of people.
lbrahim Kana assured them that they will enjoy many incentives packaged by governments such as; performance allowances, training and other incentives.
In his presentation, the coordinator and senior programme officer,’ Save One Million Lives for Results’, Lawrence Odidi, said the programme is put together to form a synergy with all development partners in the field and to bring them together to chat a new way forward inorder to improve healthcare services in Edo state.
“This programme has been going on for two years now. The essence is to get stakeholders inputs and buy in on the best way. It is a maternal and child health programme relating to women and children; to also look at those diseases affecting them and how to curb or bring the diseases to a minimum level. We are looking at things that are good for women and children to take and the federal and state governments can provide insecticide nets for them. We are looking at how women in child birth can take drugs good for their health, such as vitamin A and other supplements that will boost their immunity and that of children as well as getting our children to stick to the‘59 months of taking vitamin A”programme.
‘’ln this retreat, we just want to make sure all the implementing actors in the state are present,particularly the state ministry of Health and the state primary healthcare centres, come together and put their hands on deck to bring change to the state health sector.
“At the end of the day, we hope to come up with a work plan that we will implement. The duration of this programme is four years. It started in 2015, but because of logistic issue we spent more than the needed four years the programme was planned to last”
In her closing remarks, the Edo State Programme manager, Dr. Omonyemwen Bello said the major aim of the exercise is to develop an annual work plan for 2019, explaining that the work plan will provide room for all stakeholders to know when implementation of the programme will start so that they can partake in it.
She added that the goal is to ensure all technical guidelines are adhered to.
Dr. Bello, a Public Health Physician and consultant and deputy director, department of Primary Healthcare Management in the state said with the inputs from all the stakeholders, they will come up with good results.
