Nigeria Health Watch (NHW) partners with Connected Development (CODE) to improve the healthcare service delivery in all Primary Healthcare Centres (PHC) across the country.
Vivianne Ihekweazu, NHW Director of Programmes, explained that the partnership was initiated with the purpose of achieving positive change in the quality of healthcare service delivery across the country.
She said, Vivianne Ihekweazu said, “the foundation of healthcare delivery should be through our primary health centres and this project will focus on monitoring the effective delivery of basic healthcare services, with a view to driving positive change in the quality of healthcare Nigerians have access to.
“The purpose of monitoring healthcare service delivery and increasing accountability in the delivery of primary healthcare services will start in Kano State, to focus on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) services, and will include other services such as family planning, immunisation and antenatal services.”
Ihekweazu who noted that there are several PHCs across the country also lamented their poor performances. She butressed that “although, Nigeria has many PHCs across the country, the performance of the healthcare centres is hindered by poor infrastructure and maintenance, insufficient drugs & vaccines and substandard equipment and limited health workers, factors that are hinged on financing and governance.”
Also speaking during the signing of Memorandum of Understanding of the partnership, Hamzat Lawal, chief executive of CODE, Hamzat Lawal said, “the partnership comes at a time when sustainable measures must be put in place to strengthen Nigeria’s healthcare system.”
He added that access to healthcare is one of the basic human rights and providing basic health services to people, especially at the grassroots, through standard primary healthcare system, is key to stabilising the nation’s medical care challenges.
“Strengthening healthcare service delivery is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 3, to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages, including the delivery of interventions to reduce child mortality, maternal mortality and the burden of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria,” he said.
He noted that Nigeria Health Watch is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to advocate for the health of Nigerians, strengthen the capacity of health sector organisations, enlighten Nigerians on good health habits and practices and engage and support government and other partners to formulate and implement positive and effective health policies. Its dual strengths in health and communication enable it to provide solutions for communications and advocacy in the health sector.
Connected Development (CODE) is a non-governmental organisation, whose mission is to improve access to information and empower local communities in Africa. Its initiative, follow the money, advocates and tracks government and international aid spending in health, WASH, and education across grassroots and communities to promote and ensure open government and service delivery.
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