NPHCDA Launches Panel For PHC Evaluations

A 15-person independent panel has been established by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and other partners to evaluate Nigeria’s primary healthcare delivery.

The executive director of NPHCDA, Dr. Faisal Shuaib, who spoke at the inauguration of the panel in Abuja, said despite the huge investment in primary healthcare services, there was no commensurate improvement in the rate of maternal and child mortality in the country.

“With all the investment that we see in the primary healthcare space, especially at the sub-national level, we are not seeing the commensurate improvement in the rate of maternal and child mortality. There has been some improvement but this improvement has not been significant.

“What we are trying to do is to set a motion, sort of peer review competition that will follow specific indicators that will be measured by the judging panel, and they will look at the assessment of the results and announce which of the states that has done very well, of course, at national level but also at the zonal level and state by state level.

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“We are going to be looking at how they have been able to implement the primary healthcare under one roof, how they have been able to finance primary healthcare system and how they have been able to provide human resources, also how the governors are able to prioritise primary healthcare,”

He said every PHC in the country would be part of the assessment, stressing that it was part of efforts to revitalise primary healthcare.

Shuaib said the assessment would bring out the number of PHCs in the country that are functional. “Of the 10,000 that we have earmarked, we’ve seen different levels of functionalities but in terms of meeting the standard, we are going round to also discuss with the governors to see which ones have been renovated, which ones have the full complement of human resources,” he added.

According to Prof. Clara Ejembi, the chairman of the panel, it has a very significant role to play to be able to accountably and transparently validate the work that the steering committee and the judging panel are going to undertake in order to be able to assess the performance of the state governors in terms of their efforts to reform, finance and implement PHCs in their states.