TCI Nigeria lauds Gombe State Govt for changing narrative of FP services
The Management Staff of The Challenge Initiative Nigeria, has visited Gombe State, to assess child birth spacing situation of the state.
The team led by the country Director had series of engagements with policy makers, service delivery providers, representatives of religious and traditional leaders, Advocacy Working Group and the Media Working Group.
In an interview with Periscope Nigeria, the Country Director of the TCI Nigeria, Dr Victor Igharo, said its initiative is implemented in Nigeria by John Hopkins Centre for communication programme.
According to him, The Challenge Initiative, is a global initiative that seeks to support states to lead and drive the scale off of family planning high impact practices .
“The reason why we are using family planning as our entry point is the value that family planning brings in improving reproductive maternal, newborn and child health outcomes, So what we have done, is that we have identified a number of proven high impact interventions which are backed by research and we have somehow packaged the interventions and selected the ones that are most impactful,and that can be scaled up with most minimal resources, and still deliver the result,” Igharo explained.
Igharo said what TCI does, is to support government to implement the interventions, saying TCI does not implement but only provide technical support to strengthen health systems, create linkages between community and governance.
He said TCI also improves the capacity of advocacy and community networks such as the Advocacy Working Group, Behavior Change Communication platforms.
Commenting on what was seen in Gombe, he said there is a very strong level of leadership interest in family planning in Gombe.
He added, “Gombe is one state we are supporting, that has demonstrated passion for improving lives of the people and that passion has even extended to ensuring that no body is left behind in ensuring that they have family planning services.And this is one of the few states that has invested heavily in procurement of contraceptives .Contraceptives typically are provided by the federal ministry of health,but the state has taken the initiative to procure contraceptives because it does not want any of it citizen to be left behind.”
The TCI Country Director also commended the Gombe State Government for it passion in improving maternal and child health .
He said there is also strong commitment at the level of service delivery to ensure that quality services are provided to every client that shows up to access services.
“I have gone round some facilities and one thing I have seen consistently,is that every one that comes in contact with a primary health centre, effort is being made to ensure that person gets services as required” The country Director said.
He added that he has also seen a strong linkage between governance, community and religious leaders with advocacy and service delivery .
He however said, as much as Gombe state has done excellently well at ensuring commodities are available, there is need to reduce cost of consumables that clients are required to pay.
The Country Director also called for strengthening the integration of services such as nutrition, immunisation for provision of comprehensive health services.
“We want to see the state scale up some of those interventions that we have worked in the last two years to the entire state,” Dr Igharo added.
Earlier at a Meeting held at the conference hall of the Gombe State Ministry of Health, the Commissioner of health Dr Habu Dahiru represented by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry Malam Danladi Adamu, appreciated TCI for supporting family planning activities in the state.
“We are at the driving seat while TCI is the supporting partner. Health sector will not survive without continuous training, thanks to TCI for doing that. I want to reassure of our support and open door policy to improve maternal and child health of our people,” Dahiru said.
Also the representative of the Executive Secretary Gombe State Primary Health Care Development Agency, who doubles as the Director Community and Family Health Dr Maryam Abubakar, said child birth spacing practice has improved in the state and that the State Government is supporting to ensure availability of commodities.
The Gombe TCI Technical Advisor, Dorcas Akila, said lessons learnt from the visit are that Gombe State-led approach of the TCI model, demonstrates the importance of government leadership, and self reliance in managing family planning and adolescent youth sexual reproductive health programme AYSRH Programme, adding that it enables government responsibility for programme implementation.
The commitment of government resources to sustainably implement high impact interventions created greater trust from this partnership.
“The experience has shown that weak coordination among implementing partners in the state,led to duplication of activities and wastage of resources. However, efforts made through partners forum have yielded positive results in addressing this challenge,” Akila added.
She said traditional and religious leaders who are champions of family planning played significant role in addressing myths and misconceptions because of mass followership.
Others who made contributions to include the chairman of the Interfaith forum, Alhaji Saleh Danburam, Chairman Advocacy Working Group Alhassan Yahya and Chairperson Media Working Group Rebecca Caleb Maina, said the three groups are working in synergy to improve maternal and child health in Gombe State.
They also appreciated TCI for supporting the three groups, the Ministry of Health and the State Primary Health Care Development Agency for operating an open door policy towards improvement of healthcare services in the state.
