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By Bashir Bello, KANO

The Society for Family Health, SFH has disclosed plans by the organization to empower over 700 Community Pharmacists, CPs and Proprietary Patent Medicine Vendors, PPMVs in Kano State under a new project tagged, Integrated E, 2.0 to provide improved and quality healthcare services and handle common community health challenges.

A staff of SFH and Project Director, Pharm. Emeka Okafor disclosed this during a stakeholder’s inception meeting to unveil the project in Kano state.

The four years project Integrated E 2.0 is being implemented by the Society for Family Health, SFH and co-funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and MSD for Mothers Foundation.

Dr. Okafor said the training for the cadre of healthcare providers became imperative to empower the persons who largely provide healthcare services to the teeming population noting that 60 per cent of the people in the communities and entire nation seek care from either the Community Pharmacists or PPMVs

According to him, “It is a proof of concept that Community Pharmacists, CPs and Proprietary Patent Medicine Vendors, PPMVs on the cadre of providers that a lot of people called chemist or drug shops have the capacity to provide Family Planning and Primary Healthcare Services than they are authorized by law. And the whole essence is to be able to look inwards the minimum package of services that these providers can be properly trained to provide, properly supervised and also the treatment outcome will be such that it will be reflective of disease burden in the state and the nation as a whole.

“Currently, about 60 per cent of the people in the community and entire population seek care from either the Community Pharmacists or PPMVs. And for a very long time, government have been focusing on where 40 per cent of the people access care. So it does make sense that govt beams it search light on where 60 per cent access care to improve the quality of services that is being provided. And that is what the project seeks to achieve.

“In the state, we did a Geo Information System, GIS mapping out the size and services of the Community Pharmacists and Proprietary Patent Medicine Vendors, PPMVs in the state. We found out that we have 6,500 PPMVs and 250 Community Pharmacists. What we also discover is the Community Pharmacists are located in Kano metropolis and maybe a few popular towns while PPMVs are more in the rural areas. So it does make sense to begin to look at what quality of services are the PPMVs providing. When you look at the Primary Healthcare Services, what can they (PPMVs) be trained to provide and how can they be properly supervised to make sure that this training is translating to quality services.

“So in the state, we are looking at training just a fraction of the number, about 10 per cent (650 PPMVs and 50 Community Pharmacists).

“And we are doing this in close collaboration with the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, PCN who are regulators of the practice of Community Pharmacists and Patent and Proprietory Medicine Vendors, PPMVs. We are also working with the state Ministry of Health to make sure we achieve a better outcome,” the Project Director, Dr. Okafor said.

The Kano State Commissioner of Health, Dr. Ibrahim Tsanyawa described the project as a welcome intervention which will go a long way to help towards addressing community health cases as well as issues relating to its personnel and health facilities usually overwhelmed by patients.

The Commissioner represented by the Executive Secretary, Private Health Institutions Management Agency, PHIMA, Dr. Usman Tijjani said, “It is a very good intervention. It will empower the Community Pharmacists, CPs and Proprietary Patent Medicine Vendors, PPMVs to be able to manage small ill health issues such as diarrhoea, malaria in our communities or community cases management before referring them to the hospitals. Due to the teeming population, you have in Kano, you go to the hospital, it is a problem for you to see the doctor or no bed and the rest of that. So this intervention is going to improve healthcare service delivery in the state”.

Earlier, the Regional Programme Manager, Dayyabu Mahmud said the Integrated E 1.0 of the project was implemented in Lagos and Kaduna with the CPs and PPMVs trained to improve quality services of Family Planning but the Integrated E 2.0 is expanded to provide Family Planning services and also some minimum package of primary healthcare services like malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis and malnutrition.

Mahmud said the project encourages task shifting and task sharing policy revised to include roles for each cadre of PPMVs in accordance with the tiered accreditation system.

Meanwhile, the project is being piloted in about 11 states with Lagos and Kaduna as phase 1, Kano, Nasarawa, Gombe and Enugu in phase 2 while Sokoto, Niger, Bauchi, Borno and Yobe were in phase 3.