From Victor Nwegede, Abakaliki
A United States Agency for International Development (USAID) State2State has called on the government authorities and other relevant stakeholders in Ebonyi to rise to their responsibilities to ensure accountability and improved financing for primary health care service delivery in the state.
USAID made the call, Thursday, in a one-day interface meeting of the agency on partnership for accountability and improved primary health care financing project with the relevant stakeholders at San Diego Hotel Mile 50, Abakaliki, the Ebonyi State Capital.
Speaking at the event, the Executive Director of the Women Children's Health and Community Development(WOCHAD) Initiative, Mrs Maria Orji, said the agency has selected seven local government areas in Ebonyi State to strengthen their health facilities in the hinterlands, for the benefit of the people within the areas.
According to her, the seven selected LGAs in Ebonyi State for the project include Abakaliki, Ebonyi, Ohaukwu, Ikwo, Ezza South, Afikpo South and Ohaozara, with fourteen health facilities to be strengthened.
She expressed the agency's commitment to introducing partnerships for accountability and improved financing to the primary health care project in the state, thereby sharing project deliverables and stakeholders' roles and responsibilities.
Mrs Orji noted that the meeting was held to promote accountability, transparency and effectiveness in the Primary Health Care centres in the state.
She urged the general public especially the relevant authorities to work towards promoting the quality health service provision through primary health care financing, stressing that, "there is no how can one build facilities, employ a workforce, and just leave them without devising ways to make them more functional from year to year."
The Executive Director explained that the USAID State2State aims at identifying the healthcare facilities in the state, which the people are currently using, and what they do with them, as well as identifying the gaps and filling them.
She called on the stakeholders to work together with the agency to increase the capacity of the primary health care centres, such that they would know their needs, articulate them, and with collective support, to push for its approval and provision of the resources, which in her words, can help in strengthening primary care development agencies, community women groups, government and civil society organisations and building the capacity of the donor agencies to produce an acceptable budget that will be included in the annual budget.
Further, a Health Consultant, Mrs Mary Joy Smoke, who did a presentation of the baseline survey on primary health care financing in Ebonyi State, also called for collective support of the relevant stakeholders to promote health service provision through PHC financing.
Recall that Ebonyi State was among the selected six states of the federation to run the health project for five years, to strengthen how government generate fund and the way the fund being spent as a way of ensuring proper utilisation of the allocation, internally generated revenues and citizen participation in governance.
The event was honoured by the Executive Chairman of the Abakaliki Local Government Area, Chief Emmanuel Nwangele represented by Mr Sunday Nwoba, the Executive Director of Daughters of Virtue and Empowerment Initiative (DOVENET) - Mrs Ugo Nnachi, Dr Ibiam Azu - a Key Stakeholder Championing the project in the state, different coordinators of Ward Development Centres, Officers in charge of Community Health Care Facilities, among others.
