Ibrahim Shuaibu in Kano
The Co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Bill Gates has appreciated the success stories emanating from Kano state, in terms of improvement in coverage across Primary Health Care indicators.
Gates said Kano’s coverage for polio immunisation “has improved from 19 percent in 2013 to 46 percent in 2018. But more needs to be done in terms of strengthening the Primary Health care system.”
He gave the figure during a video conference involving Kano state governor Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, Chairman of Dangote Foundation, Aliko Dangote and other stakeholders, on Kano State Health System Strengthening Program Review on Friday.
Although he said no case of Wild Polio Virus has been recorded in Kano since 2014, Gates highlighted the critical need “to strengthen key process components of Primary Health Care such as supply chain, to make the goal of total eradication of Polio achievable”.
Gates encouraged the state government “to maintain sufficient and timely funding as well as better coordination of the anti-Polio program.”
Also, Dangote expressed satisfaction with the improvement the state government recorded regarding data quality, though stressed the need for the state health team “to work towards developing a robust data quality improvement plan before the end of the year”.
“This is targeted towards reducing the discrepancy administrative and survey data for all key health indices”, he maintained.
In a statement by his Director-General, Media and Communication, Ameen Yassar, Ganduje said despite the current challenges in the health system, the state had continued putting the structures in place “to ensure that the ongoing partnership is on course to deliver the expected results within the State Primary Health Care Management Board, Hospitals Services Management Board and Drugs and Medical Consumables Supply Agency.
“Since the last review, we have made remarkable progress beyond few programmatic areas of focus to additional scope in doing more around strengthening two-way hospital referrals, maternal health and malaria program coordination.
“This is in addition to the already ongoing work of strengthening the existing areas of focus and consolidating gains made in operating our coordination platforms and the cross-agency linkage between the various MDAs under the State Ministry of Health.”
Ganduje promised that hospitals in the four newly created emirates in the state would be standardized with more beds spaces, as part of his administration’s goal to maintain the tempo in improving the quality of care for the primary health care services; sustain the quality integrated supportive supervision, and scale-up strengthening of two-way referral linkages between primary and secondary health care facilities.
