Commissioners for Health, Executive Secretaries of health agencies from states and other health stakeholders have re-affirmed their commitment to strengthening primary healthcare and child survival initiatives.
They spoke in Abuja on Thursday during a meeting on “Integrated Child Survival Advocacy, ICSA.”
During the event, there were discussions on policy priorities, financing, and accountability mechanisms for health agencies at the state and local government level.
Others at the meeting were health officers from the federal institutions, development partners, and civil society leaders.
ICSA Project Lead, Dr Nihinlola Mabogunje, said the engagement was part of a broader effort to strengthen public systems and leadership for child health through evidence-based advocacy and intergovernmental coordination.
She said the project also aimed at sustainable financing for primary health care.
According to her, there is a need to fashion out practical actions states can take to improve service delivery and reinforce accountability to communities.
Mabogunje said that ICSA would advocate resources to be made available for state health agencies to enable every child to have a good quality of life.
Dr Fatima Adamu said that the states that were selected to test-run the project were having no impressive indices on terms of child survival.
“We are determined to carry this advocacy to the lower level, the communities with mother and child as our target.
“The only way we can do that is to engage with those close to the communities.
“We are talking about child survival, and that has to go with immunisation. you know, there is serious hesitance. For example, in some of the states, we have as low as 20 percent poverty in immunization.
“We are determined to improve immunization coverage and reduce hesitancy. Parent should be taking their children for immunization. The second one is about malaria. Many children are dying as a result of malaria,” she said.
According to her, this is worrisome because all the sicknesses are preventable.