80% under-five deaths occur in primary health centres — Osinbajo

The Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo on Monday said 80 per cent of the 2,500 Nigerian under-five children who die every day occur in the primary health care centres.

Osinbajo said this in his keynote address at the launch of the Community-Based Health Research Innovative Training and Services Programme in Abuja.

According to him, Nigeria accounts for only two per cent of the world’s population but accounts for 14 per cent of the world’s maternal death burden.

“Similarly, our country loses 2,500 children under the age of five every day due to largely preventable causes, including the lack of services that skilled birth attendants could provide. It is of interest that 80 per cent of these death burdens occur in the primary health care and community levels,” he said.

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Osinbajo, who was represented by the Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen said no country can boast of effective healthcare delivery without adequate and well-distributed human resources for health.

“No matter how much of a masterpiece the architecture of a health facility is, or how sophisticated the equipment are, or even the availability of the commodities, a health care delivery system will not function optimally if there are not enough skilled workers”.

“There is no better way to tackle the challenges of health care delivery in Nigeria than to close the gaps in the equitable availability of skilled health workers in Nigeria’s PHC facilities. This can be achieved by a creative measure such as the CRISP which is the Community-based Health Research, Innovative Training and Services Programme.”

“I can confidently tell you that President Muhammadu Buhari and I are ever passionate about interventions that would help to improve the health and wellbeing of the Nigerian people, and I have no doubt in the capacity of Dr Faisal and his team.”

He said the CRISP initiative will make skilled health workers from teaching hospitals and federal medical centres available to offer services in the PHCs across the country.

Also, the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire in his address said, Nigeria is facing the challenges of gross inadequacy and inequity in the availability of human resources for health, especially skilled birth attendants, doctors, nurses, midwives, and Community Health Extension Workers trained on Modified Life-Saving Skills across in PHCs.

Ehanire said, “Aside from the problems of gross inadequacy and inequitable distribution of our skilled health care workers, we are also facing the problem of their attrition from the PHC facilities.

“With this kind of situation, no matter how much you invest in building and equipping a health care facility, if there are no skilled workers to provide the needed services, it is as good as there are no health care services for the people.”

The minister noted that the CRISP initiative will help to transform the PHCs.

“The initiative will leverage our teaching hospitals and federal medical centres in all the states of the federation to pull together skilled health care workers to the PHC centres in our communities where they will routinely provide services and mentorship, as well as build the capacity of the PHC workers.”

“CRISP has been carefully conceptualised and designed in ways that would be helpful towards the realisation of government’s vision of Universal Health Coverage,” he said.