by By Simon Ushie
Enabling Resource allocation matched with competent manpower is said to guarantee efficiency and productivity especially in the health sector, an analogy that calls for effective partnership between states, the Federal Government and well endowed partners as Nigeria seek to attain Universal Health Coverage status in the nearest future.
Among these decisive moves is the collaboration between the Cross River State Primary Healthcare Development Agency and the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency to train health workers in the advance management of Reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child , adolescent, elderly Health and nutrition program across the 18 Local Government Areas of the state.
Flagging off the training exercise in Calabar on behalf of His Excellency, the Governor of Cross River State, Senator Professor Ben Ayade, the Director General of the Cross River State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr Janet Ekpenyong encouraged the participants to remain committed and focused to the course of learning in order to be abreast with the new development.
She said the essence of the training was to build capacity of health workers to ensure quality service delivery. She said as Federal Government and state government work hand in hand to bridge the gap of limited human resource through the basic health care programme and employment into service respectively, it is pertinent that health workers are trained and retrained to ensure optimal service delivery which will encourage patronage in their facilities to complement efforts of the Community health influencers and Promoters (CHIPS) agents who will be engaged in influencing and mobilizing people to patronize facilities.
She highlighted some of the challenges faced in the primary health sector which requires urgent attention to include the high rate of maternal and child mortality, inadequate human resources and adoption of modern Health techniques which she said the training is set to address.
She appreciated Global fund and NPHCDA for choosing Cross River State among the first 3 states in the federation for the pilot phase of the high impact Resilient Sustainable System for health(RSSH) project which will help tackle lapses in the Primary Healthcare facilities especially in the rural areas.
Speaking earlier, the Permanent Secretary of the Cross River State Ministry of Health, Dr Iwara Iwara lauded Global fund for the support and for choosing Cross River State to ne one of the beneficiaries while also charging the participants to take the training serious and help support the state to mitigate the high rate of maternal and infant mortality by ensuring to disseminate appropriate information to health workers at the various facilities and reiterated Cross River State Government’s commitment to ensure only qualified health personnel will be absorbed into the service.
The Integrated service delivery focal person from the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Musa said the NPHCDA is one of the subrecipient of the global fund project and one of the major benefits of the project is to train health workers to provide quality integrated health services to clients to ensure we reduce cases of low patronage of health facilities as well as mortality of mother and child.
The Program which is sponsored by the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency through the support of the Global Funds Resilient Sustainable System for health will facilitate the high impact advance knowledge, train and produce at least 40 state level trainers on integrated sercice delivery to serve the state
It will further build the capacity of at least 150 PHC service providers on the ward minimum Healthcare package using the integrated training documents developed to suit Cross River’s work pattern, program management, sensitization and mobilization for high impact program scheme.
The training was facilitated by well knowledgeable instructors who have designed different frame works for the advancement of Primary Healthcare activities in the country and participants are to disseminate same knowledge at ward, Community and facility level.
Also present at the event were, Mr Julius Idoko of NPHCDA, Comrade Bassey, Chairman community health workers union, representative of the chairman of National Association of Nurses and Midwives, the Director Community and family health, Mrs Sally Enyim, the state social mobilization Officer, Mrs Nsa Ekpenyong amongst others.
