By Femi Bolaji

A civil society group, Connected Development, CODE, has said 80% of the 90 Primary Health Care, PHC, facilities it tracked across 15 states on their readiness to store and administer Covid-19 vaccines operate below minimum standard.

Taraba state focal person for the group, Yahuza Magaji, disclosed this Friday at a town hall meeting with stakeholders in Jalingo, the state capital.

He said the COVID-19 Transparency and Accountability Project in the selected states was essentially to track donations for COVID-19 and monitor the conditions of Primary Health Care Centers across the six geo political zones.

The 15 states according to Magaji are Abia, Anambra, Imo, Ebonyi, Cross Rivers, Yobe, Bauchi, Gombe, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Plateau, Kebbi, Osun and Taraba.

According to him, “we did our findings for three months across the states from March to June 2021.

“Two PHCs were selected from each zones of a state, making it 6 PHCs per state.

“What we were able to discover was that 90% of these facilities were essentially designated for antenatal and maternity care.

“Some of their challenges include the following but not limited to inadequate personnel, dilapidated structures and lack of Covid-19 vaccines storage facilities.”

He however, enjoined state governments to do more for primary health facilities to operate optimally and ensure they have capacity to store and administer Covid-19 vaccines.

The Director of Immunization at Taraba State Primary HealthCare Development Agency, Dr. Kenneth Tijo, in his remarks noted that more budgetary allocation for health is needed to strengthen the capacity of PHCs.

He however noted that Taraba state currently has 90 standard PHCs and the government is working to upgrade other PHCs across the state’s 168 electoral wards.

He further thanked CODE for their advocacy and said a blueprint has already been developed to cover the areas of concerns raised in CODE’s findings.