Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has said the country presently loses 2,500 children under the age of 5 everyday due to largely preventable causes.
He said 80 per cent of these death burdens occurred in the primary health care and community levels.
The Vice President regretted that among the causes of infant deaths were lack of skilled birth attendants.
In his speech at the launch of community-based Health Research Innovative Training And Services Program (CRISP) by the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA), yesterday, Osinbajo said there was no better way to tackle the challenges of health care delivery in Nigeria than to close the gaps on the equitable availability of skilled health workers in our Primary Healthcare Centre facilities, which he said could be achieved by a creative measure such as the CRISP.
“For this reason, I think there is no better way to tackle the challenges of health care delivery in Nigeria than to close the gaps on the equitable availability of skilled health workers in our PHC facilities. This can be achieved by a creative measure such as the CRISP. This is the Community-based health Research, Innovative Training and Services Programme.
“I am aware that Nigeria makes up only 2 per cent of the world population but accounts for 14 per cent of the world’s maternal death burden. Similarly, our country loses 2,500 children under the age of 5 everyday due to largely preventable causes, including the lack of services that skilled birth attendants could provide,” he said.
Osinbajo said the deplorable health induces clearly justified the need for urgent actions to be taken to implement the CRISP to address the situation.
“I can confidently tell you that President Muhammadu Buhari and I are ever passionate about interventions that would help to improve the health and wellbeing of the Nigerian people, and I have no doubt in the capacity of Dr Faisal and his team working in partnership with the academia and teaching hospital will implement and get the desired result from this initiative.
“This initiative will not only make skilled health workers from our teaching hospitals and federal medical centres available to offer services in our primary health care centres in all states of the federation but will also be leveraged to ensure capacity transfer to, and mentorship of PHC workers as well as promotion of best practices in community health.
“It is my belief that effective implementation of this initiative will help to fast track the attainment of universal health coverage as well as reduction in preventable maternal and child mortalities in Nigeria,” he said.
Earlier, the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, said Nigeria was facing the challenges of gross inadequacy and inequity in the availability of human resource for health, especially skilled birth attendants (Doctors, nurses, midwives, and Community Health Extension Workers (CHEWs)) trained on Modified Life Saving Skills across our primary health care facilities.
The minister said primary health care centres have remain unattractive to most of our skilled workers, who prefer to provide services in the urban settings.
“So, aside from the problems of gross inadequacy and inequitable distribution of our skilled health care workers, we are also facing the problem of their detrition from the PHC facilities,” he said.
On his part, the Country Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr. Walter Molumbo, said the plan to recruit health workers and deployed them to PHC facilities across the country was very commendable, adding that, WHO Nigeria would provide technical support to the CRISP of NPHCDA to enable it achieve its aims.
