National Association of Community Health Practitioners of Nigeria, NACHPN, has urged the Federal Government to prioritize funding of routine immunisation to increase coverage, reduce child morbidity and mortality indices.
The President of the association, Akor Jude, and Emmanuel Abanida, Senior Technical Advisor, PacFaH@Scale, gave the advice at a post-conference media briefing on Saturday in Abuja.
The health experts particularly urged government at all levels to prioritise funding for the procurement of vaccines, operational activities and improvement of activities targeted at getting vaccines to the “last child”.
Mr Abanida said that the underlying motive of the conference was to facilitate discussions that would motivate government to prioritise the engagement of efficient and skilled health workers at some of the revitalized PHC centres.
He said that PacFaH@Scale would partner with NACHPN to strengthen advocacy and provide evidence-based research studies for improved service delivery.
The technical adviser said that the partnership would cover four areas, namely: Primary Health Care-under one roof; Routine Immunisation; Family Planning; and Prevention of Child Killer Diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhoea.
Similarly, Mr Jude lamented the absence of healthcare services in the rural communities of the country.
He said the challenge could only be addressed using competent community health practitioners.
Mr Akor pointed out that it was on that basis that the association decided to work closely with PACFaH@scale to improve healthcare service delivery to Nigerians.
He frowned at the decision of the Federal Government to engage community health influencers and promoters despite having hundreds of thousands of trained, but unemployed community health practitioners in the country.
The News Agency of Nigeria recalls that the association organised the 24th Annual Scientific Conference with the theme, ‘Containing the spread of emerging communicable diseases in Nigeria’
The conference brought together community health practitioners from across the country to discuss health challenges.
NAN
