The primary healthcare in Enugu State has received a boost with the engagement of Local Government Authority Health Secretaries (LGAHS) to superintend its operations in the 17 local councils of the state.

The 17 Local Government Authority Health Secretaries, who are Medical Doctors, were appointed to oversee primary healthcare in line with the laws establishing the Enugu State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (ESPHCDA).

However, it is the first time the state has implemented the law since the Agency came into being in 2017. The Executive Secretary, ESPHCDA, Dr. Ifenyinwa Ani-Oshekun, stated, during a three-day residential training programme for the health secretaries, that Governor Peter Mbah is committed to restoring confidence in the primary healthcare landscape as a way of improving the health standards of the people.

Ani-Oshekun added that the state government is poised to improve health indicators in areas such as nutrition, immunisation and antenatal care to achieve universal health coverage; hence the appointment of the medical officers.

He said: “We expect that going forward, they are stepping into their new roles to make a difference. We have shown them where Enugu State is and where their local governments are in terms of measurable milestones. In Nigeria today, immunisation coverage is one of the key indicators.

“We have also developed a tracker dashboard and every month, we will be tracking our immunisation, and our antenatal coverage. This is because we have noticed that our women would rather go to unskilled maternity homes to have their babies. We are also tracking them in their area of nutrition because it is the next tsunami that is hitting the nation and the world because of the economic hardship caused by inflation. So we have developed this dashboard that would be used to track them.