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80% of PHC’s in Nigeria, operating below standard - Report
Health
By Anthony Isibor.
THE findings from a recent investigation carried out on the state of Primary Health Care Centres, PHCs, across the 6 geopolitical zones of the country by the Covid-19 Transparency and Accountability Project, CTAP, a Civil Society Organization, CSO, has revealed a huge deficiency in the PHCs in Nigeria.
This was revealed during the CTAP Coalition Building Meeting on “Health Care Accountability Beyond COVID-19” held in Lagos on Monday, November 22, 2021.
The investigation was focused majorly on assessing the government’s transparency and accountability in the management of COVID intervention funds and support to citizens, so as to build the capacity of citizens in order to monitor the state of PHCs and vaccine storage, distribution, and handling in the states and monitor and advocate for a transparent and inclusive approach in the distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines in Nigeria, and to provide information on the state of PHCs across Nigeria in readiness to receive and distribute vaccines across the country.
Pearl Utuk, Project Assistant, CODE, who decried the difficulties of accessing PHC’s in Nigeria while presenting the report at the event, said that “A common denominator discovered from the summary of the findings, “Is that PHCs in Nigeria are functioning below the minimum standard stipulated by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA.
The summary of the inadequacies discovered in the 15 PHCs investigated across the six zones of the country includes hoarding of Covid-19 vaccines by health workers, poor access roads to these centers, epileptic power supply, inadequate staff, scarcity of Covid-19 vaccines in the centers, and lack of awareness on the benefits of the vaccines.
Statistically, 80% of the 90 PHCs fall below the minimum standard stipulated by the NPHCDA, 30% of PHCs do not have access to clean and safe water, thus they rely on water from wells, rain, or storage thanks as their major source of water supply, 2 out of every 10 PHCs had no form of electricity, they rather supplement natural lights with lanterns and torch lights.
According to Utuk, “In the case of medical emergencies, you cannot easily get access to a PHC.
“The centers have no connection to the National grid, leading to lack of power supply, inadequate staffing and scarcity of vaccines was not only limited to the 15 centers visited but cuts across all the states in the federation.
She said that phase two of the project would focus on addressing vaccine hesitancy.
In talking about increasing the people’s trust in governance, we must ask these questions, “What informs vaccine distribution, what is the government’s strategy in vaccine distribution?
She added that to foster transparency, the government needs to have a distribution strategy.
“We also found out that some PHCs received less than 10 vials of the Covid-19 vaccine, if a PHC receives only 5 vials of vaccine, who is it getting to, is it not just the people within the facility itself, you are not talking about the community.
“It was also discovered that health workers were hoarding the covid-19 vaccines. So in cases where the communities have decided to reject the myths about the vaccine and accept to receive it, due to the efforts of NGO’s and CSOs, who have embarked on awareness campaigns on the importance of the vaccine, they are either told to pay some money or are told that the vaccines are not available, except they know somebody that knows somebody.
“How can we ensure that everyone is vaccinated, no one is left behind, that the vaccination is not limited to a few people who know certain people who have access to the chain.
“80% of the 90 PHC that are below minimum standard requirement is a staggering number, what service are they then offering,” she asked.
She also added that “only 56 out of the 90 PHC’s have the recommended pharmaceutical fridges required to safely store the vaccines.
“According to the NPHCDA, each PHC is supposed to attend to a population of about 10,000 to 20,000 people.
“If only 56 out of the 90 PHCs have the recommended fridge, then what happens to the remaining 34 communities where the 34 PHCs are located and are supposed to be offering vaccination services to tens of thousands of people?
Realnews reports that part of the recommendations made by CODE and shared with Vice President Yemi Osinbanjo includes that the NPHCDA should set up a strong monitoring evaluation team, if absent, which would routinely track PHCs to ensure that they operate at the minimum stipulated standard by the Agency
– Nov. 23, 2021 @ 09:55 GMT /
A.I
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