The Nigerian government through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), has launched the Community-Based Health Research Innovative Training and Services Programme (CRISP) to promote quality interventions at Primary Health Care (PHC) facilities across the country.
The CRISP programme is an initiative of the Federal Government geared towards addressing the Human Resources for Health (HRH) gaps to positively impact the quality of PHC services across the country.
Speaking during the launch in Abuja, the nation’s capital, Nigeria’s Vice President, Professor Yemi Osibanjo said: “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 PHC facilities.”
The Vice President who was represented by the Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen said this could be achieved by a creative measure such as the Community-based Health Research, Innovative Training and Services Programme, (CRISP).
“I am aware that Nigeria makes up only 2 percent of the world population but accounts for 14 percent 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. It is of interest that 80 percent of these death burdens occur in the primary health care and community levels. This clearly justifies the need for urgent actions to be taken to implement the CRISP to address this situation.”
The Vice president noted that President Muhammadu Buhari and his office are ever passionate about interventions that would help to improve the health and well-being of the Nigerian people, and he has no doubt in the capacity of the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Faisal Shaib and his team working in partnership with the academia and teaching hospital will implement and get the desired result from the initiative.
“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.”
According to the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, Nigeria is facing the challenges of gross inadequacy and inequity in the availability of human resources for health, especially skilled birth attendants (Doctors, nurses, midwives, and Community Health Extension Workers (CHEWs)) trained on Modified Life-Saving Skills across primary health care facilities.
“Working in 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. With this kind of situation, no matter how much you invest in building and equipping a health care facility, if there are no skilled workers to provide the needed services, it is as good as there are no health care services for the people”. He said.
Dr. Osagie said to address these challenges, the federal government, in March 2022, on the initiative of NPHCDA, had a summit on re-imagining PHC in Nigeria during which they presented a 4-point agenda for PHC transformation
He explained that the agenda focused on improving access to service delivery through PHC revitalization, one of the strategic pillars for achieving this is ensuring the adequacy, competency, and distribution of a committed multidisciplinary primary health care workforce supported through effective management, supervision within an enabling environment.
“I am happy to inform you that the CRISP initiative we are launching today is one of our programmatic ways of achieving the first of our interrelated 4-point agenda on PHC transformation in Nigeria. CRISP is a partnership between the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, the tertiary teaching hospitals, the Federal Medical Centres, the State Primary Health Care Boards, Local Government Areas and the communities to support PHC development.”
The Minister noted that the initiative will leverage the countries teaching hospitals and federal medical centres in all the states of the federation to pull together skilled health care workers to the primary health care centres in communities where they will routinely provide services and mentorship, as well as build the capacity of the PHC workers.
The Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Faisal Shaib explained that the number one problem with primary health care in Nigeria is inadequate number of primary health care workers with qualified primary health care workers and only about 30% of primary health care workers have the right workforce.
”So what we’re doing today is to launch a scheme whereby resident doctors from tertiary institutions, like teaching hospitals, medical centres will adopt the Primary Health Care Centre, go there to provide practice to do research, now we’ve put together this program so that we can support the teaching hospitals and medical centres to consistently deploy residents doctors to the primary health care centres, so that they can see patients and we’re looking at institutions because of the quality of the work that is going to be provided at the Primary Health Care Centre, then we can begin to see a solution whereby there is a net gain”.
According to him, the agency is also using the opportunity to recruit additional nurses, midwives that are very critical for making sure that pregnancy and childbirth are safe with collaboration with the National Youth Service Corp, (NYSC) doctors will be preferentially deployed to the primary health care centres to again have better quality in terms of human resources and workforce that is available.
“So we’re now having brain gain in the primary health care centers, rather than a brain drain providing the right environment for medical doctors giving them the right kinds of incentives to do their work. We feel that we also help in reducing brain drain out of the country”. He added.
The World Health Organization Country Representative, Dr Walter Kazadi Mulombo, said that WHO Nigeria will be with Nigeria to provide technical support to the CRISP of NPHCDA to achieve its aims.
“We will work with you to develop strategies to improve the performance and retention of Health workers in rural and remote areas”.
The UNICEF Chief of Health in Nigeria, Dr Eduardo Celades, said that CRISP represents a significant step in addressing this evident shortage of skilled human resource and the UNICEF is fully committed to the strategy and will commit resources to expand the number of midwives, nurses and improve the maternal and child health in the country.
“UNICEF is excited that the Federal Government of Nigeria, through the NPHCDA and in collaboration with Teaching Hospitals, is leading this flagship initiative.” He added.
PIAK
