Politics
ENUGU State House of Assembly says it will enact a law to improve the healthcare services in all the primary health centres across the state.
The House Committee Chairman on Health, Mr Sam Ngene, said this on Friday in Enugu when he led his committee members on a visit to the State Primary Health Care Development Agency (ENSPHCDA), as part of their oversight functions.
Ngene said that when enacted, the law would make it mandatory for medical doctors to be posted to health centres to further strengthen healthcare at the grassroots.
According to him, the law will restore people’s confidence in the state’s primary health facilities and reduce the pressure on the secondary and tertiary health facilities.
The lawmaker, representing Enugu South Urban Constituency, expressed his committee’s determination to ensure that the state government’s plan toward primary healthcare was achieved through legislative means.
He said that the oversight visit had afforded the committee the opportunity of interfacing with the agency, in order to get first-hand information regarding its operations and challenges.
Also speaking, a member of the committee, Mr Jeff Mba, urged ENS-PHCDA to intensify its supervision so as to maintain the required standard in primary health centres across the state.
Mba, representing Oji-River Constituency, noted that the effective supervision would go a long way in curtailing sharp practices as well as improve the quality of health services by the health centres.
Executive Secretary of the agency, Mr George Ugwu, called for implementation of the ‘Primary Health Care Under One Roof’ (PHCUOR) to enable the agency take full control of health centres’ activities and staffers.
This, he said, would further empower the agency to implement the state government’s health policies, programmes and frameworks at the grassroots, which was the main focus of the present administration.
He also informed the legislators that ENS-PHCDA had shortage of personnel, as no single worker had been employed in the last three years, in spite of the fact that many had retired from service.
The executive secretary said that this had forced the agency to recruit special ad-hoc staff to assist it during immunisation exercises.
He appealed to the committee to assist so that the agency could recruit more staff members as soon as possible. (NAN)
E.C
Tags: ENSPHCDA Enugu Sam Ngene
