By Douglas Okoro
The Integrated Health Programme (IHP), an NGO, says it has trained over 800 health workers in Ebonyi to strengthen Primary Health Care (PHC) services in the state.
The Director of the programme in the state, Dr Gladys Olisaeke, disclosed this on Wednesday at Ndibe community in Afikpo North Local Government Area during a three-day workshop organised for media practitioners in Ebonyi.
The workshop, supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is collaborating with the state’s Ministry of Health.
Olisaeke said that the goal of the initiative was to contribute to the reduction in maternal morbidity and child mortality, as well as strengthen the provision of quality PHC services.
She said “our intervention in the state has three main objectives; which are to strengthen Primary Healthcare Services; to improve access to PHC services and to improve the quality of PHC services.”
The director explained that the USAID-IHP had introduced active defaulter tracking of pregnant women in Ebonyi to ensure that the women gave birth in equipped health facilities after ante-natal services.
She added that a number of women attended ante-natal services in well-equipped or recognised health facilities but always patronised quacks and Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) to give birth to their babies.
She stressed that the behaviour often led to high maternal morbidity and child mortality in the state.
She advised that enhancing the capacity of journalists in health governance reportage would deepen the campaign for effective utilisation of primary healthcare centres in various communities in the state.
She said that IHP was supporting no fewer than 212 primary health care centres, adding that the IHP in 2021 donated medical equipment worth millions of naira to Ebonyi Government to boost basic healthcare provision.
“This is the major thrust of our intervention in the reproductive, maternal, newborn healthcare, nutrition and malaria control,” she added. (NAN)
