Group vows to monitor health facilities in rural areas

A group under the aegis of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), and Primary Health Centre engagement has resolved to establish a monitoring unit to track the activities of health facilities, especially in rural areas.

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In a statement released on Wednesday and jointly signed by the Chairman and Secretary of the group, Bala Ahmad Mohammad and Peter Ibrahim Amfani, the decision to create the monitoring unit was taken at its meeting held in Kaduna and informed by the decay in the healthcare system, especially at local government areas.

The CSOs noted that the gesture was to support the development of improved healthcare services nationwide.

According to the group, the aim of setting up the monitoring unit is to ensure that ordinary citizens can access quality, affordable medical healthcare, especially in rural areas.

The statement reads, “At the Kaduna meeting held at Arewa House, we discussed extensively some of the problems facing healthcare delivery services, especially in the rural areas, and resolved to work out functional modalities to inspect and monitor PHCs as a way of check on the personnel and management of the facilities.

“We discovered that Nigeria’s healthcare infrastructures across the country remain severely underdeveloped, lacking the modern medical facilities that are essential for quality care with the country’s healthcare indicators ranking among the worst in Africa.

“Considering the rate of deprivation, poverty, and death rates, the need to monitor the functionality of medical healthcare facilities, equipment, and personnel efficiency has become a thing of paramount importance to ensure quality healthcare for the deprived citizens.”

The group said, the decision to concentrate on monitoring the PHCs to complement National healthcare development agencies with emphasis on ensuring that the ordinary citizens enjoy affordable and accessible healthcare services without any bureaucratic bottleneck was to improve healthcare delivery.

Speaking further, the group said it discovered that the country has several barriers that limit delivery of PHCs: amongst them the internal conflict in parts of the country, crime, and corruption, multiplicity of governmental and donor agencies, vertical programs, low political commitment to implementation of approved health policies, differences in remuneration between levels of care.

“Our study also revealed that inadequate referral services, inadequate number of staff, high cost of drugs and services, availability of healthcare for 24 hours were some of the factors with high frequency that influence the utilization of healthcare services.”

However, it urged the federal government to improve funding of the health sector, expressing worry that, the health system is relatively weak, and there is yet a coordinated response across the country with several health workforce crises being reported due to poor welfare, lack of appropriate health facilities and emerging factions among health workers.