By Joseph Erunke, Abuja

The National Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA,says 8,300 of the nation’s primary healthcare centres will be activated for full -sale services to Nigerians in the next four years.

The agency said it woulld invest in the health facilities through states and partners to give citizens the desired health services at the grassroots level.

Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of NPHCDA ,Dr Muyi Aina,who said these after a strategic meeting of the agency’s directors and senior staff in Abuja, disclosed that a framework would be developed to produce,equip and retain frontline health workers in the facilities.

Over 34,000 primary health care centres are said to be in existence in the country with just 10 percent of the number functioning.

Dr Aina insisted that 8,300 of the facilities being directly funded by the federal government, would be made fully functional for citizens especially at the local level to access health services.

He said:”Right now,we have 8,300 that are being funded directly as part of the basic healthcare provision fund and the NPHCDA gateway.

“Over the next four years,we are going to be really working to get them fully functional. Fully functional meaning they have what they need to provide quality services- they have the workforce,they have the commodities,they receive technical assistance to make good use of the resources that they are getting through the decentralized facility financing and they have all other inputs- equipment and and infrastructure including accommodation for the health frontline workers that are working in them.

“We are going to be expanding the number of facilities that are directly supported by the government . In addition to that,we are going to be investing quite a bit in developing a framework to produce,equip and retain frontline health workers at the health facilities. We have a lot of migration among health workers in Nigeria right now. So the government is going to be focusing with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, but also working again with states and the Federal Ministry of Health.

“We will be looking at ways to improve the production ,to improve the retention and even just satisfaction, commitment and attitude and the competence of the health care workers that are providing the services in primary care centres.

“In addition,we will be participating in government’s efforts to lower the cost of health commodities through pooled procurement and other interventions that seek to improve local manufacturing and ultimately shape the market in a way that works for our people and reduces the financial cost but also improves access to the care.”

Speaking further,he said:”In addition to make quality health care available,we are going to be taking a look at what we call the National Primary Health Care Development Agency’s Gateway of the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund,to really making a few changes in conjunction,in collaboration with the states, to see how we can improve the way it is currently disbursed and the way it is currently used to insentivise quality and make sure that the facilities have the flexibility to use it for what they really need to improve the services they are providing for Nigerians.”

Dr Aina,who assumed office the head of the agency about three months ago, following his appointment by President Bola Tinubu,said NPHCDA was in a process to really “rejig our strategic direction and identify our priorities that will guide us as we move into the next couple of years of our work in trying to improve the primary healthcare in Nigeria.”

“Since we came in about three months ago,we have done a lot of listening and assessing where we are and to determine where, the direction of where we need to go,which is what culminated in these couple of days’ meeting, where all of the directors and senior staff members of the NPHCDA assemble here to really brainstorm and look at the direction we need to go.

“We have iidentified, coming out of the overall direction articulated by the Coordinating Minister of Health,we have identified a strategy which really seeks to make every Nigerian have access to the basic services they need and the trust wherever they may reside in Nigeria and that in itself,is anchored on three pillars. One of the pillars is really focusing on quality primary health care services available and that has a number of components under it.

“The first is having primary healthcare centres at work. As you are aware,we have thousands of primary healthcare centres in Nigeria. The agency has been working with states trying to support over the last years. We want to make sure we invest in them, working again through the states and through the partners to have truly functional facilities,”he explained.

He said NPHCDA would work with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control,NCDC to guarantee health security for Nigerians.

“Another pillar of our strategies is really working with the National Centre for Disease Control to support them in their efforts to guarantee health security for Nigerians. So,the primary health system has a footprint across the country for now,we even want to improve on that. We want to work with NCDC to make the primary health centers sensitive so that they can detect when they are outbreaks or health emergencies and also able to respond to it before the time that they will take to mount a broad national response,”he said.

He hinted that,”We are also going to be doing quite a bit around transparency and accountability,so Nigerians will be hearing from us periodically..”

” They will be able to know where we are on the target that we have set. We will also have two way lines where we can be reached when the services are not measuring up to what we have promised so that we can identify what the issues are and improve on them. These are all the measures we will put in place to ensure reduction in the unnecessary mortality and sickness amongst our people,”he said.