Govt Upgrades 163 General Hospital

The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has earmarked 163 General Hospitals to serve as referral hospitals to enhance Primary Health Care (PHC) delivery.

Dr Muhammad Pate, the Executive Director of NPHCDA, made the plan known, yesterday, in Abuja, in an interview with newsmen.

“To enhance the Midwifery Service Scheme (MSS), a Ward Development Committee has been formed.

“In addition, 163 General Hospitals have been identified to serve as referral hospitals for the PHCs,” he said.

Pate said the agency had concluded plans to roll out innovative mobile GSM health interventions.

To this end, he said that the agency had acquired 653 special handsets for the PHCs.

The director said the scheme was a Federal Government programme funded by the Millennium Development Goals/Diagnosis-related Group to address the high infant and maternal mortality rate in Nigeria.

“The agency is the implementing entity,” he said.

Pate said 2,488 midwives had been deployed to the 36 states and FCT with 653 PHCs in 160 clusters of four PHCs each benefiting from the programme.

“We are very pleased that all 36 state governors and the FCT have signed the MSS Memorandum of Understanding.

“Midwives have been called to 35 states and FCT, Edo State call up is expected within a week.”

He said the midwives were currently being retrained on life saving skills and integrated management of childhood illnesses and interpersonal communication.

Pate said a rigorous monitoring and evaluation system had been put in place to enable the agency to inform Nigerians of the impact of the scheme within two years.

“Baseline study for the evaluation has already been concluded,” he said.

The director noted that the main challenges that the agency would face would be to hold state governments and local governments to honour their commitments to the midwives.

He said some midwives, who had withdrawn from the scheme on personal, family or health grounds after deployment had been replaced.

“We call upon all state governors and local government chairmen where MSS midwives were deployed to continue to support the scheme in order to save the lives of women and their newborns,” he said.