By Joseph Erunke, Abuja

The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, has said that about 20 million contacts are being made with Nigerians through the revamped primary health care system.

He added that the reform in the nation’s health system, especially at the primary health care centres, was attracting about 80 million contacts every year.

The minister said that despite the prevailing challenges, some states have recorded significant improvements in skilled birth attendance and antenatal care attendance, as well as in performance data reporting, hailing state governments across the country for their efforts.

“In some areas, the performance is marginal, but we are also learning from each other. Overall, we are seeing improvement in how states are reporting data about their performance,” Pate said yesterday, in Abuja, at the Sector-Wide Approach State Strategic Engagement with North Central and South Western States Stakeholders.

According to him, Nigeria was making improvements in healthcare access and the delivery of quality healthcare services to Nigerians, especially at the Primary Health Care (PHC level.

“Just to put it in context, every quarter, about 20 million contacts are made with Nigerians through the primary healthcare system, which has now been revamped.

“That means about 80 million contacts. It doesn’t mean 80 million people, but it means at least 80 million contacts per year, which means that the primary health care system, imperfect as it may be, is beginning to pick up because of the reforms that this government started under the leadership of the president and with the support of all the states, the local government, civil society, and development partners, as well as Nigerians, because it is all of us, including community leaders, traditional leaders, that have to demand for the care.

“This is an exercise to assess our performance by ourselves, leading up to the joint annual review that we will do later this year, and we’re very pleased with the support that we’re seeing from all the states that are actively engaged in this effort, which is part of really the transformation that we are undertaking together with everyone,” he.

Pate who regretted that the health sector had suffered many years of under investments, noted that even though it would take some time before the country’s health sector is positioned the way Nigeria s were looking forward to, the current administration has in the last two years, undertaken deliberate investments which was “matched” by many of the states.

He spoke further:” We expect that on an annual basis, a joint review will take place, and the state of health report will be produced so that Nigerians get a sense of where we are. We have a health sector that has had many years of underinvestment, but this administration, over the last two years, has deliberately invested, under the leadership of the president, and many state governments are matching what the federal government is trying to do. So it’s a continuous process, and it will take us some time for Nigeria’s health sector to be the way we want it to be.

“But we have started that journey of transformation, and we all have to continue on that path. We have to join hands with the federal government, and state and local governments also have to step up. The civil society organisations and the media also have to educate Nigerians that health is one thing that should bring everybody together, because it affects all of us.

“With the direction that we have in the federal government and the states keying in, we are already beginning to see early signs that things are slowly improving, but they have to be sustained and we are committed to making sure that Nigerians get the benefit of these improvements that we are making in the system.”

On his part, the National Coordinator, Sector-Wide Coordination Office, Dr. Muntaqa Umar Sadiq, said the performance dialogue by states was focused on examining the core sets of indicators and allowing states to reflect on their performance and identify areas of improvement and collective action.

“We do this every quarter and focus on our important priorities, everything from skilled birth attendants to routine immunisation to all the important interventions required to crash maternal, neonatal, and under-five mortality.

“This gives us a basis for performance management with states so that we’re focusing on the important notes, identifying the problems and removing those issues to achieve our collective goals.”

He explained that the different problems in each of the six geopolitical zones have been identified, and their efforts have been supported to improve their ability to save the lives of women and children.

“For the first time, we’ve not only had dialogues looking at the same sets of indicators with every single state, but we’ve had a joint annual review and we’re building on that to have these performance dialogues that feed into their annual operating plans so that in the sector wide, when we say one plan, one budget, one report and one conversation, it speaks to an aggregation of every single state’s plans. And that’s why we’re quite excited.

“So states have now identified their issues, the bottlenecks stopping them from moving the needle. Some of the colours of the scorecards that you see were red. So we’ve discussed why and what the pragmatic factors are that will get them from red to green, and as a ministry, we are supporting states in debottlenecking those issues and improving their performance.

“Going forward, we hope that this will translate into improvement in population health outcomes where facilities are more functional, primary health care facilities are connected to CMAL facilities where emergency services are working, where the treatment for malaria or the availability of maternal and child health interventions are available at the frontline,” he said.

Vanguard News