The Executive Secretary of the Kwara State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Nusirat Elelu has complained about some challenges facing healthcare delivery in the state.
At the 40th Media Parliament, organised by the state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Elelu identified inadequate personnel due to persistent turn over in staff in the agency.
She stated that misinformation and disinformation on the media space has affected uptake of primary healthcare services.
The executive secretary, however, gave a scorecard of the areas where the state government excelled to include improvement in the vaccination coverage with a rate of 66.5 per cent and one of the top three in the North-Central geo-political zone.
“Kwara State was moved out of immunization zero-dose state in the country, this paving the way for an improved routine immunization coverage”, she said.
On the issue of supplemented immunization campaigns, Elelu disclosed that, on measles, Kwara was the “over all best state in the country in 2021 measles vaccination and over 700,000 children vaccinated in the 2023 measles campaign”.
She said that, despite the achievements recorded by the state government in the past four years, the goal is to among other things achieve and sustain greater than 70 per cent coverage in the routine immunization and other immunization activities.
Others included substantial increase in the number of women with access to quality maternal and childcare.
She said the state government also desires to sustain increase in the number of complimentary outreach activities conducted including immunization, family planning, health education, treatment of basic ailments among others to bring services closer to the state citizens living in the hinterlands.
“At present, we have one functional PHC in all our 193 wards, we hope to be able to double that number to 386 in the next few years to ensure we bring equitable and quality health services to Kwarans especially at the grassroots.
“In the last four years, from 13 state run facilities, we now have 44 that are in the process of transiting into comprehensive health centres to serve as model centers providing all essential primary healthcare services”, she added.
