The Society for Family Health (SFH) says its IntegratE 2.0 Project helped prevent approximately 15,000 malaria deaths among children under five.
Emeka Okafor, Group Director of SFH’s Donor Funded Portfolio, disclosed this on Wednesday in Lagos at the close-out dissemination event for the Gates Foundation-funded project.
IntegratE is an SFH-led initiative that strengthens community pharmacists and Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors (PPMVs). It expands access to quality family planning and primary healthcare services, particularly in underserved communities.
The project was developed to address persistent gaps in access to family planning and primary healthcare. Its second phase ran across 11 states, including Lagos, from October 2021 to September 2026. It integrated community pharmacies and PPMVs into service delivery.
Okafor said malaria services reached more than 1.2 million children under five. Large numbers were tested, and those who tested positive received Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT).
“About 340,142 under-five children with diarrhoea were treated with ORS and zinc. Also, 137,703 under-five children with pneumonia were given Amoxicillin DT,” he said.
He added that 7,681 children aged six to 23 months received micronutrient powder. The project also identified 10,898 presumptive tuberculosis cases, with 1,320 confirmed cases placed on treatment.
The intervention enabled about 1.7 million women to access family planning services. Of these, nearly 400,000 were first-time users. According to Okafor, the figure shows the potential of trained community providers to reach women outside formal family planning services.
Providers were trained to conduct medical eligibility screening before offering chosen contraceptive methods. “Where a particular method was unsuitable, providers were trained to offer further counselling and support clients,” he said. They were also trained to manage contraceptive side effects and identify clients needing referral to higher-level facilities.
“These results demonstrate the broader potential of community-based providers to contribute to essential primary healthcare services,” Okafor said.
He pledged SFH’s continued technical support to states seeking to sustain and expand IntegratE 2.0 interventions. Sustainability mechanisms were deliberately built into the project to preserve its gains after donor funding ended.
Rather than training PPMVs directly, SFH worked with the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria to accredit schools of health technology. These institutions were then trained to cascade knowledge and skills to community-based providers.
“This approach ensured training capacity was embedded within existing institutions, allowing continued training after project closure,” Okafor said. It aligns with SFH’s broader mission of strengthening healthcare systems and expanding sustainable access to quality services.
“The key focus of SFH is reaching underserved communities with quality family planning and primary healthcare services. And that’s exactly what this project has done,” he added.
Community pharmacies and PPMVs were targeted because they serve large numbers of Nigerians, especially in underserved areas.
Looking ahead, Okafor urged governments to recognise community pharmacists and PPMVs as important parts of the healthcare system. He called for their integration into formal referral systems and the inclusion of their service data in the National Health Management Information System, specifically the District Health Information System (DHIS-II).
Such integration, he said, would give government a fuller picture of healthcare utilisation and support better planning and policy decisions. He also urged federal and state governments to bring private-sector referrals into formal systems to ensure continuity of care.
Dr Dayo Lajide, Permanent Secretary of the Lagos State Ministry of Health, said the state is taking steps to sustain referral and data systems. She was represented by Dr Ismail Abdusalam, Director of Epidemiology, Biosecurity and Global Health.
Lajide said Lagos has maintained collaboration among government tiers, public facilities and private providers, including community pharmacists and PPMVs. This has been particularly important in strengthening referrals across public and private facilities.
The state is also strengthening health data through its Smart Health Information Platform, designed to unify electronic data collection across health facilities. The system has expanded beyond public facilities to include private-sector providers, creating greater visibility of services delivered by community-based providers.
Lagos plans to integrate IntegratE 2.0 lessons and interventions with existing malaria, HIV, tuberculosis and reproductive health programmes. “This is not going to stand alone as a mono programme; it will be integrated into other programmes,” she said.
On institutionalising the project’s gains, Lajide said Lagos will continue using task-shifting and task-sharing to address healthcare workforce shortages. IntegratE 2.0 provided an opportunity to strengthen Lagos’ existing community-based healthcare network rather than create a parallel system.
Dr Samuel Oyeniyi, Director of the Reproductive Health Division at the Federal Ministry of Health and Co-Chairman of the IntegratE Project Steering Committee, identified evidence generation as a major outcome of the project. He said the evidence would support policymaking and that the ministry would work with the National Family Planning Committee to consider the findings during policy and programme reviews.
Oyeniyi commended the Gates Foundation, the SFH consortium and the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria for supporting the project and contributing to the integration of community-based providers into Nigeria’s healthcare delivery framework.
