The Kaduna State Government has said it will recruit 3,059 primary healthcare workers to improve the state healthcare.
The Executive Secretary of the state Primarily Healthcare Development Agency, Dr. Hamza Abubakar, disclosed this yesterday when a coalition of non-governmental agencies in the state, under the aegis of Partnership for Advocacy in Child Health @Scale (PASA), paid a visit to the state ministry of health.
Abubakar disclosed further that the state Governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, has also approved the purchase of contraceptives and family planning commodities worth over N300 million.
He said the state government has achieved much in the healthcare sector by upgrading primarily health centres across the state.
According to him, of the 255 primary healthcare centres being upgraded, 185 have been completed while others are at various stages of completion.
Abubakar said: “In terms of access of modern contraceptives to women, though we are far from our target, one of the major factors is the fact that there was too much prolonged time of stock-outs for the commodities.
“I remember that the governor spoke with the minister of health to give us permission in the state to procure them because the family planning commodities are actually sent centrally from Lagos.
“Now we have gotten permission from the federal Ministry of Health to procure the family planning commodities by ourselves.
“We have got to the point of processing the gap and we got approval from the governor to do virement of over N300 million worth of contraceptives and other family planning commodities.
“We also have approval to recruit 3,059 healthcare workers and the recruitment will soon start.”
He further stated that “for upgrade of facilities, the state government has made tremendous achievements.
“You may be aware that the government of Kaduna State has made it mandatory to upgrade, by rebuilding and refurbishing 255 primary health centres so that we can have functional primary health care centre per ward.
183 of the 255 have been completed, while about 50 are up to 60 and 94 per cent completion.”
Abubakar added that a supplementary budget of N1billion has been made to complete the remaining upgrade.
Speaking earlier on behalf of the NGOs, Mr. Bartholomew Sati said the visit to the ministry was to congratulate the state government for its recent achievements in the health sector.
Sati noted that data from 2018 Demographic Health Survey shows that Kaduna State is contributing to health in Nigeria with 23.3 percent of women delivered by skilled birth attendants; 13.7 percent of women using modern family planning and 2.1 percent of under-five children given ORS and Zinc.
According to him, the visit was timely and was a response to the government’s commitment to improving its performance in the health sector.
He however appealed to the state government to address some other challenges facing the health sector.
