How to curb child mortality, by NPHCDA chief

Olayinka Oyegbile

The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA),  Dr Faisal Shuaib has promised to reverse the daily loss of over 3000 children to childhood mortality in the country.

He said this at a meeting with health editors in Abuja, according to him, the federal government through the agency has put in place strategies to curb child mortality and maternal death across the country.

The agency in a report had indicated that 3,200 under five children die in a day. Dr Shuaib said this was unacceptable  adding that the revitalisation of over 10,000 primary health care centres across all the 774 local governments in the country are at pace.

He, however, said the job of revitalisation of these primary health care centres was a joint responsibility of the states and local governments. He said human resource was a major challenge to achieving adequate primary health care and that the agency and state governments are collaborating to see to it that this is achieved.

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Shuaib, who is also the chief Executive Officer of NPHCDA, disclosed that over 4,000 primary health centres have been renovated and awaiting been revitalised adding that states that have met the minimum required standards of NPHCDA have started enjoying its support.\

He stated that the primary concern of the agency is to ensure that there was no fragmentation in health care in the country.

On how the agency intends to cut child mortality and maternal death, he said the government through the agency are working towards strengthen health deliverables and that the United Nations (UN) as well as the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for health care delivery are being pursued and worked on.

He solicited the support of the media in the saying journalists are “critical stakeholders in the society that wield both direct and indirect influence on virtually every aspect of the socio-economic lives of Nigeria including healthcare service delivery.” He called on then to help provide the platform to promote and consolidate health care delivery in the country in line with the mandate of the federal government.

Shuaib promised to implement several innovative strategies and interventions to revamp and reposition the agency in order to effectively deliver on its mandates to all citizens.

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