The Kogi Primary Healthcare Development Agency (KSPHCDA) has urged Local Government administrators in the state to give maximum support to its activities to enhance quality healthcare delivery to the people at the grassroots.
Executive Director, KSPHCDA, Dr Abubakar Yakubu, made the call in Lokoja at the flag off of the first round of the 2019 Maternal, Newborn, Child Health Week (MNCHW).
He said for the agency to operate at its optimal level in terms of primary healthcare delivery, all hands must be on deck.
“With the recent financial autonomy of the local governments, it has become very necessary for them (council administrators) to support our routine immunization as well as distribution of vaccines to hard-to-reach areas in their communities,’’ Yakubu said.
He particularly appealed to them to key into the activities of the agency, especially Routine Immunization (RI), stressing that the overall success of the agency’s activities is central to local authorities.
He said that the state had been certified free of Polio virus for 10 years now, but cautioned that the detection of wpv1 and cvdpv2 in Nigeria and neighbouring states, underscored the importance of maintaining high level of RI coverage at all levels.
He commended Governor Yahaya Bello for signing the Primary Health Care Amendment Bill and the State Health Insurance Agency Bill into Law.
He, therefore, called for prompt operationalisation and implementation the provisions of the law so that they could yield the desired results.
‘‘The demands for vaccination and other pressing needs cannot wait for unnecessary bureaucracy.
‘‘The delay in processing some of the requests of the Agency is making our work a bit slow,’’ Abubakar said.
In his remarks Governor Bello, commended the development partners who had been working with the agency to improve the state’s health indices.
Bello, who was represented by the Speaker, Kogi House of Assembly, Mathew Kolawole, said that the main objective of MNCHW was to reduce morbidity and mortality in mothers and children less than five years of age.
The wife of the governor, Mrs Rashida Bello, who flagged off the programme, said the improvement of health indices remained the main agenda of the state government.
