*Kaduna State Government committed to quality health care delivery
**We are pushing for more funding –Commissioner for Health and Human Services
Bu: Lola Seriki- Idahosa, Kaduna,NorthWest,Nigeria
The Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria in collaboration with Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health and Scale SOGON – PACFaH@Scale Project has Commended kaduna state government for the increase in Child spacing funds, saying it will increase availability, accessibility and affordability of child spacing commodities and consumable.
The Focal person of the project Professor Mohammed Abdul, made the commendation during an advocacy and consultative visit to the state Commissioner, Ministry of health and human services Dr. Paul Dogo. In kaduna on Thursday.
Prof, Abdul urged the State government to increase funds for family planning also known as child spacing commodities and consumables to enable more reproductive age women access the service.
According to Prof. Abdul, “We are here this morning to pay you a advocacy visit in the area of child spacing particularly in the area of funding in Kaduna State. You have started the good job but we believe you can do more.
“We are going to be pushing for increase funding for child spacing services in Kaduna state. We need more funding to be where we ought to be which is 46 percent contraceptive prevalent rate (CPR) as against the current 24 percent.
“We are also tracking budget around primary healthcare centres in the state to ensure regular availability of the commodities and consumables possibly at no cost.
“So, timely release of the fund is very important to make purchase ahead of time because we are having more people going for the services now”, he added.
Secretary, Family Health Advocates in Nigeria Initiative (FHANI), Iliya Kure, hinted that, his organisation has been working with the state government to ensure its aims are achieved.
“We have been working with a group of journalist under Child Spacing Media Forum (CSMF) who have undergone training around the subject natter and they are doing well. These are the journalists that are committed to issue of maternal and child health in Kaduna State.
“We appreciate SOGON for bringing her organisation aboard the project. We have been working around this area with results and I hope we will achieve the aim of the project too this time around.
Responding, Commissioner, for Health and Human Services, Dr Paul Manya Dogo restated that, “health is one the priority of this government and the state has practically committed to the sector right from the beginning of this administration. We are strengthening primary healthcare in the state. We have signed several MoUs to ensure success of our intention of provision of qualitative healthcare delivery for the people in the state.
“On the issue of Family Planning we are grateful for the success so far recorded. The governor was committed due to heavy advocacies in this area.
“That level of commitment is still there. You will recall that we have trained and we are still retraining our service providers especially on attitudinal issue so their character can improve enrolment.
“For every 200 spent on child spacing, we will be saving over 400 and thereby reducing maternal mortality, peace, improved economy and even check population explosion.
“What is best to do is to invest more in our health system. We shall continue to make defense for the programme any time we go to the assembly to defend our budget. There has been increase in number of those that are going for the services and that means we are making progress which we are quite happy about.
“In Kaduna State, training has been centralised and domicile in the office of the chief of staff and whenever there is a need for the training, we will utilise that but if that is what is available, we make use of it while we push for the training to be in the ministry though we are financially constrained for now.”
The state government had earlier in the year released and cash-backed the sum of N100 million captured in 2018 budget for the programme which led to the purchase of child spacing consumables worth N98 million as part of strategies to reduce maternal and child mortality rate in the state.
Other partners at the advocacy visits includes: KADMAN, SPHCDA, RUWOYSI, SMATT, KSPHCDD, AMDF, Gaworo Foundation..
