The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, says would develop a template on primary healthcare that would make Sokoto state a fulcrum in the North western Nigeria.
This was disclosed by the UNICEF Country Representative, Mr Peter Hawkins who led a team of two other health experts on a visit to Governor Aminu Tambuwal at the state’s liaison office in Abuja on Thursday.
According to Hawkins who scored the governor and the state high on its performances in security, COVID-19 pandemic and strengthening primary health care, UNICEF is looking forward to working closely with the state.
He said since last year the international body, after a meeting with states in the federation, had mulled the idea of Sokoto state as part of its focal point of primary health care development in the Northern region and Nigeria.
On his part, Tambuwal assured the UNICEF that with the huge technical and financial assistance being proposed for disbursement to various states, the efforts of the body will receive strong support from the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF).
In his capacity as the Deputy Chairman of the NGF, Tambuwal said: “We’ll continue to do our best. We will work to see that the states buy-in into the program,” stressing that “as governors we are really concerned about primary health care. Rest assured that under the chairman of the NGF, Dr Kayode Fayemi, “the entire govs are ready to work with you.”
Gov. Tambuwal, who expressed appreciation to the body for all its assistance and cooperation now and into the future, said before he came into office not much attention was given to healthcare.
“That was why we had these bad statistics, which made us come up with a blueprint to renovate dilapidated health structures, build new ones, including 3 premier 150-bed capacity general hospitals, the 950-bed capacity
Sokoto State University Teaching Hospital (SOSUTH), and constructed a College of Health Sciences,” he enumerated.
Other achievements in the health sector, which is one of the cardinal goals of the administration, noted the governor, were the employment of about 100 medical doctors, sourcing of 200 youths to study medicine abroad, the establishment of an ICT backbone to keep a comprehensive record of all medical cases to be domiciled in the SOSUTH, the ongoing construction of a Diagnostic Center, which is almost completed and the construction of 2 Colleges of Nursing Sciences.
Gov. Tambuwal explained that his administration’s venturing into all these is to enable it integrate the disparate aspects of the health care system- primary, secondary and tertiary levels, into a whole in the state.
On the issues raised by the UNICEF as posing challenges to effective health care delivery in the state- staffing of primary health care centers, availability of drugs and pharmaceuticals and training of staff, the governor said the state was aware and is working towards remedying them, especially with the engagement of about 1800 nurses and midwives.
In his remarks, a member of the UNICEF team, Dr. Abou Kampo, who said the team had inspected some health facilities in Sokoto state, and is satisfied with the state’s performances, hinted at the need to factor gender issues into healthcare delivery ones, “because this is important.”
He emphasized that “it is not about facilities alone but the people that will benefit from them.”
“The combination of facilities and community health workers need to be harnessed for the bigger picture to be clearer,” he noted, while advising that there is the need to escalate the use of drugs where necessary and enhancement of capacity for rural districts management of the primary health care scheme.”
Hoping that “it is important to strengthen the system to confront post-COVID-19 issues in the sector, Dr Kampo reiterated that “Sokoto is a very solid ground for leading primary healthcare in the area.”
Also Dr. Paula Beltran, Head of Primary Healthcare of the UNICEF in Nigeria, assured that funding for the program, on a countrywide scale, will be based on performances by states, pointing out that all the 36 states of the Federation will be assessed on maternal framework.
She said the UNICEF is looking forward to Sokoto in surmounting the primary health care challenges in the North and Nigeria.
