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FROM: PAUL ORUDE, BAUCHI The Bauchi State Government has announced October 12 and 13, as days for the distribution of the seven million Euros (N2. 4 billion) worth of medicines and health equipment to beneficiaries. The consignments had been donated by the European Union (EU), United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), PLAN International and other development partners to the state. This was disclosed to journalists by the Executive Chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency (BSPHCDA), Adamu Gamawa in his office, while giving an update on the five-year EU-UNICEF Maternal, New-Born, Child Health and Nutrition (MNCHN) outcome project in the state. Gamawa said that the date was to give the agency enough time to finish on-going training of Community Case Management, recruitment of officers to adequately cover hard to reach communities and finalise issues of logistics management tools. “Based on our meetings with UNICEF we have agreed that 12th and 13th of October is enough for us to finish all the training and then start moving the items into the communities,” he said He explained that some of equipment and medicines are to be branded centrally by UNICEF so that the organisation’s logo will be on them to show tax payers where their money is going and to also secure the equipment against bad elements who may be tempted to divert them. “Some of these items will be taken to some communities that are hard to reach and we are still in the process of recruiting the team that will be doing this and the advertisement is on our website for the midwives, CSS that will be reaching hard to reach communities,” he revealed. Gamawa disclosed that to ensure that the health equipment and medicines get to the desired target, the agency conducted planning meetings to select hard to reach communities under the community resilience component of the EU-UNICEF MNCHN project. He explained, “We have about 2000 hard to reach communities that have no adequate access either they are blocked by water or no access road. “Those settlements that are not within reach of the communities, we now have structures through which they can now reach them – the establishment of Local Government Area Health Advisory Committees and LGA Health Management Team. Those that have this structure are assumed to have PHC under One Roof. “We began by conducting planning meeting with state and LG stakeholders. Before this we selected the 323 facilities to serve as the One PHC per ward. Instead of trying to cover the over 1000 PHCS in the state, we targeted One main PHC in that ward to provide the necessary services. We met with the LG and selected 110 that we will start with, that is five PHC in each LG in Bauchi State and then we selected 10 in Bauchi, 10 in Katagum being the most populous LGs making110. We did Rapid Assessment to find out can they accept the equipment now? Are they ready to receive the commodities? Is there manpower? Are they really trained on how to manage these things? We did Rapid assessments of the 110 facilities. Our target was state ministry if health, the SPHCDA, the LG Management Teams and other agencies of health care” He said that the agency in collaboration with the EU-UNICEF had trained 120 Community Health Extension Workers (CHEW) on Modified Life Saving Skills (MLSS) to save mothers during delivery as part of efforts to reduce maternal, new-born and child mortality rates in the state The Executive Chairman said: “We conducted training of six CHEWs on Modified Life Saving Skills to save our mothers during delivery. We did first and second rounds. We have now trained 120 CHEWs across the state on MLSS. We conducted training on HMIS (Health Management Information System to improve on data our collection.” He said that other things received by the state from the EU-UNICEF MNCHN project include 150 and motorcycles and 120 delivery beds to improve the maternal, new-born and child health and nutritional status of the state. |
