By Suleiman Adamu, Sokoto
A call to the Sokoto state government by the She-Alert Care Foundation (SHE-ALERT), a Non-Governmental Organisation,
to step of efforts at creating a budget line for Integrated Supportive Supervision (ISS) in it 2025 appropriation bill was on Friday brought to lime light.
Besides, The She Alert Care Foundation rolled out to span fir give years , also urged for the establishment of a Technical Working Group to support ISS activities.
It explained that the group’s existence in the state will positively enhance other components drive impact on the project activities in the state.
The Executive Director of SHE-ALERT Care Foundation, Blessing Gidado made the call at a two day
media roundtable organised in Sokoto as she disclosed that the five-year scale project, which commenced in October 2020, is being implemented in four states of Sokoto, Bauchi, Kebbi, and Ebonyi respectively.
Gidado explained that the ISS drive , anchored by the Better Life Restoration Initiative (BERI) aims at achieving the USAID-funded five-year Health System Strengthening Cluster project in the state.
She said the project, implemented by Palladium in collaboration with Nigeria Resource Partners (RPS), is titled “Improved Quality Healthcare Service Delivery through ISS.”
The Executive Director said the intervention would facilitate quality improvement by ensuring adequate oversight as well as skills and knowledge transfer to healthcare service providers while observing that domestic financial support for ISS in Sokoto was inadequate, leading to a high dependency on donor funding.
According to her, over the years, practical activities had shown that many health programs had been heavily funded by donors supporting ISS activities on tuberculosis (TB), HIV, among others stressing that “Although donor support is important, it is mostly unsustainable and has debilitating effects on ISS continuity,” she added.
Gidado emphasised that the current structure and placement of ISS in the state were suboptimal, limiting the initiative capacity to effectively engage through a sector-wide approach for effective implementation.
“Supervision activities are conducted more in facilities that receive the basic healthcare provision fund and other interventions.
“This is leaving out the remaining health clinics and health posts, especially those located in hard-to-reach communities,” she observed.
She further identified the non-inclusion of private sector partners in funding and supporting ISS activities as a significant factor robbing the state of valuable resources while recommending adequate supervision of all Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs) in the state be intensified to facilitate and guarantee quality service delivery.
