Primary healthcare stakeholders in Ebonyi State have called on the state government to employ medical doctors and other mainstream health workers into the sector to save it from collapse.
The stakeholders comprising Civil Society Organizations, town union executives, faith-based organisations, the media and others, raised the concern in a two-day training in Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State capital.
The training organized by Development and Integrity Intervention Goals Foundation (DIG) with support from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Integrated Heath Programme (IHP) was focused on understanding budget process, standard provisions of Ward Health System, National Health Promotion Policy, Basic Health Care Provisions Fund as tools for holding leaders accountable.
The participants who also demanded improved budgetary provision for Primary Healthcare system to enhance the state’s health indices, observed that the dearth of health workers has taken a negative toll on the services of the centres across the state.
The participants further called on state government to give general adequate attention to the State Primary Health Care Development Agency (SPHCDA), as a necessity towards addressing funding challenges in the agency and solving the health needs of the people in rural communities.
Addressing participants during a presentation, the Executive Director of DIG Foundation, Oliver Aja Chima, drew attention to the lamentable state of primary health centres in the state, and urged the participants at the training to rise to the occasion by demanding improved condition of the centres from leaders, through strategic application of the knowledge gained from the training.
He further challenged them to own the facilities by giving consistent attention to the activities of health workers in the centres to demand effective service delivery, at least, within the limit of their equipment.
Chima explained: “In the analysis we did, we found out that most of health posts are in deplorable condition; we found out that over 75 per cent of most of our health posts don’t have toilet and this is worrisome.
“The health centres are not fenced, the schools are not fenced also.
“If you come to personnel, should we talk about medical officer and that is Doctor: How many do we have?
“I did the analysis and I discovered that Ebonyi state is lacking doctors, nurses and midwives; pharmacists, technicians, CHEW, environmental officers, medical records staff, among others.
“All these things, they are not there even in my own community.
“There was a time I went for monitoring; I went to my community and the health facility was locked.
‘I told them that I cannot leave that facility until they open that place that day.
“The person that is in charge of the facility went to the market and I asked them, does sickness give signal?
“Why must you lock public health facility?”
In a remark, the USAID-IHP Leadership and Governance Advisor in the state, Chinyere Ikwuakor, also lamented that a lot of children in the state were suffering malnutrition in spite of the agricultural popularity of the state.
She called on the state government to employ all means within its reach to improve the State’s general health care system, especially at the primary health sector which covers the most vulnerable rural segments of the population.
“This is a state that is known for agriculture, produces yam, rice and other foods in large quantities, yet there is high malnutrition in this state.
What is the cause? Why should it be like this?” Ikwuakor queried.
In a lecture, the Adviser to DIG Foundation, Dr. Emmanuel Abah, called on government at all levels to ensure that masses were integrated in the budgeting process to enable them make inputs, stressing that budget must be responsible to the people to justify the concept of citizen’s budget.
He called on the stakeholders to always track budgets for Primary Health Centres in their domains to ensure that funds mapped out were released and judiciously used to tackle the problems confronting the centres.
Sharing their experiences at the training, some of the participants, including the Town Union President, Ogwudu-Ano Ngbo Development Union, Ohaukwu LGA, Nwachukwu Obazi, and Barnabas Orji from Okpuitumo Community in Abakaliki local government area, appreciated DIG and USAID-IHP for the opportunity granted them to enrich their knowledge.
They pledged to step down the knowledge to their various organisations, subjects and subordinates so as to collectively work towards better service delivery in the primary health facilities.
Orji said: “Before now, I hadn’t any knowledge on how to analyse budgets, and I never knew that I can influence projects and services in my health centre.
“I thank USAID and DIG, because from now, I am going to follow them bumper to bumper to make sure that my health centres are adequately catered for.”
The training by DIG, under its USAID-IHP’s Sub-grant project, was carried out across the three senatorial districts of Ebonyi State.
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