After ascertained the area of needs in improving primary health care service particularly, maternal and child healthcare delivery through deployment of digital technology and drugs for malaria prevention in pregnancy, the Hacey Health Initiative has promised more support for primary healthcare service delivery in Oyo state.
This disclosure was made by Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Officer for Hacey Health Initiative, Olu Emmanuel Iyiola in response to the request by the Chief Nursing Officer and Head of Facility, Mrs Felicia Olalekan, Odo Ona Elewe Primary Health Centre (PHC), Akala Expressway in Oluyole local government area of the state.
Mrs Adeyinka , while thanking Hacey and other partners for their visit and support, she solicited for more support in the area of delivery equipment and security to enable the Facility works for 24 hours.
The Chief Nursing Officer has stated that the Facility could not work for 24 hours as a result of insecurity and appealed to Hacey Health Initiative to assist in that regard as well as more delivery equipment.
Speaking on this Iyiola said the purpose of the visit to the Odo Ona Elewe PHC was part of the facility tour of Hacey Initiatives in conjunction with its partner,
Intellectual Property Research Deployment (IPRD) Solutions, New York, and other key stakeholders to know how far the support given to PHC in Oyo state have been to improve their service delivery.
He maintained that they believe they can improve the maternal and child healthcare response leveraging on technology and training for the personnel in the facilities across the state.
He said they are on visit to see for themselves how the support given to them has improved their service delivery, also to know the area where they can still be of assistance in improving primary healthcare delivery through digital technology.
Iyiola explained that Hacey and its partners such as Intellectual Property Research Deployment (IPRD) Solutions, New York, other partners and key stakeholders were visiting the health centres to access and see how interventions deployed have been put into use in a bid to improve maternal and child healthcare service in the state.
Hacey Health Initiative and Partners, IPR Solution have been working with the Oyo state Government since 2020 to improve maternal health service provision in the state using data and technology to improve maternal outcomes.
Hacey Health Initiative is a development organization focused on improving the health and productivity of vulnerable and underserved populations in Africa.
In the past 14 years, the organization has worked with UNFPA, Path USA, Empower UK, Amplify UK, the Nigerian government and other private sector partners to implement various girl child and women’s rights related projects in the areas of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and sexual violence programs.
According to Iyiola, “We believe we can be of help to improve maternal and child healthcare response leveraging on technology, which we have deployed into some PHC in the state, we were on the facility tour to see how far this interventions have gone.
“One of the main things we have seen here today was that everybody is working together to make sure that mothers have premium healthcare and they are able to live healthy life especially with their children and they are able to give birth in good condition basically with the use of technology and drugs to prevent malaria in pregnancy.
“As we are here today, we have discovered that this facility has capable personnel doing their services effectively and efficiently but we also discovered that there were some repeated or duplicated processes, which with the aid of digital technology, it would be very easier.
“We found out that everybody is willing and open to work with it and that there are still a lot of ways it can be applied to other areas of healthcare within the system and especially the learning, training and re-training about the different new technologies to advance maternal and child healthcare delivery.
“On their request, we have been supporting them in the area of provision of mobile phone for data collection, drugs for malaria prevention in pregnancy and after delivery.
“The support is subject to availability of resources, as we are able, we are always ready to scale up the support for primary healthcare, particularly safety of pregnant women and their babies in Oyo state.
“This is something we are so eager to work with the government, we are hoping that going forward, as we engage other stakeholders in talks, discussions and dialogues that we will be able to chat a better way forward, especially with improved technology, improved data collection and analysis.
“We have been working with the government and we have started working on this plan. The pre-covid, covid and post covid era and our current realities, we are committed, the government is committed and we are not in a rush to throw out a solution and walk away.
“We are in for the long haul and we understand that these things takes time, and as long as we are working together, we should see great outcome coming out by the end of it all, and since it is a long term thing, we have different milestone and designated period in our timeline and our ultimate goals which is improvement of maternal and child healthcare response”.
Editor, South-West,
Lagos Post Online
Email: raji_adebayong@yahoo.com
M: 08034094059
