By Uangbaoje Alex, Kaduna
Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) working around health sector, has rated the Kaduna State government low on the upgrade of the 255 Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) across the state.
The state government in 2016 commenced the rehabilitation and upgrading of 255 PHCs, across the state under the primary healthcare under one roof project.
The CSOs, at an event on Tuesday, ‘Open Kaduna Health Sector’, a quarterly assessment meeting of the health sector in the state, therefore, recommend the need for government to immediately start an re-upgrading of the PHCs, most of which did not meet up with PHC standard.
The event was organized by a coalition of CSOs, Kaduna State Accountability Mechanism (KAD-MAM), in collaboration with Initiative for Integrated Grassroot Empowerment and Support (IIGES), under the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health at Scale (PACFAH@Scale) Project.
The coalitions had last week sent their members to visit the entire 255 PHCs to access what the government has so far done after 3years of embarking on the upgrade.
Earlier in his presentation of a spot check survey carried out by the coalitions, Alhaji Mustapha Jumare, revealed that only 7 out of the 23 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the state, have 13 standard rooms for service provision. And that only 7% of the PHCs have a minimum of 4 nurses/midwives attached to them.
The report also showed that most of the centres does not provide 24hours services, which was a serious cause for worries by the group, expressing doubt about the fate of women that entered in to labour especially at night.
According to the survey, only 38% of the PHCs have ambulances, which are mostly not functional and security is another big challenge facing the centres as about 17 LGAs does not have at least 2 security per centre.
The report further revealed that none of the PHCs have a minimum number of 19 health workers and support staff working in them and that only 52% of them have staff houses. But most of the centres does not have wall surrounding them.
They therefore recommend that the state government should commence immediate re-upgrading the PHCs, recruit enough health workers, security and also create a maintenance centre to take care of the facilities.
In his response, Director Public Health at the State Ministry of Health, Dr. Addo Zakari, said though the state had employed nurses at the state level, and decline to speak further on the PHC level, but said director PHC will be in better position to speak about it.
Source — Newsweb
