Enugu appoints 17 LGAHS to strengthen primary health care

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 government areas of the state.

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

It is, however, the first time the state is implementing the law since the agency came into being in 2017.

Executive Secretary, ESPHCDA, Dr. Ifenyinwa Ani-Oshekun, stated during a three-day residential training programme for the health secretaries that the state governor, Peter Mbah, was committed to restoring confidence in the primary healthcare landscape as a way of improving the health standards of the people of the state.

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

“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. You have to look at your under one, and that is one of the primary mandates of Primary Health. We have also developed a tracker dashboard and, on a monthly basis, we will be tracking our immunisation, tracking our antenatal coverage, and that 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 globally because of the economic hardship caused by inflation. So, we have developed this dashboard that will be used to track them.

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“So, we expect that as soon as they get there, they will be able to address these areas that have hitherto challenged the state to make visible change. We have also informed them that at the end of each year, there will be an annual assessment, and this will also add up to the assessment of the local government chairmen. Two weeks ago, we gathered the local government chairmen and their deputies for a full-day residential workshop similar to this, where we discussed the role of the local governments in terms of primary health. Again, we showed them what the situation is with their local government. We informed them that we would institute a local government leadership challenge, where every local government would compete among themselves. What we want to do is to bring elements of that peer pressure so that everybody’s scorecard will be shown to the whole of Enugu State. So, the overall aim is to improve the health standards of our people; to ensure that they can access quality medical services in the rural areas in line with Governor Peter Mbah’s vision and mission,” she stated.

Ani-Oshekun added that Governor Mbah, during his campaigns in 2023, moved around the political wards of the state, stressing that the visits enabled him to have firsthand information about the situation of the primary healthcare centres in the state and why the people, especially those in the rural areas, don’t have access to quality care.

“Those visits were responsible for the construction of Type 2 hospitals that the State government has embarked upon. Contracts have been awarded for the construction of the 260 Type 2 hospitals, and so far, 60 have been completed and equipped. President

Bola Tinubu, who was here last month, commissioned the 60 completed. This is in addition to the upskilling of about 1,200 primary health workers to ensure efficiency in the system,” she said.

She said that full digitalisation of the operations of the primary health facilities had started, stressing that the aim was to track medical records of patients in any part of the state.

Ani-Oshekun advised the newly recruited Local Government Authority Secretaries to ensure the realisation of the visions of the state government towards achieving a healthy citizenry that could impact the economic growth of the state.

She stated that assessments would be made from time to time based on the blueprint they presented during their training.

Two of the newly recruited Local Government Health Secretaries for Aninri and Enugu North local governments, Chimezie Chilaka and Aneke Emmanuel, respectively, who spoke with The Guardian, stated that they had a responsibility to bring Enugu State to the limelight in ensuring accessibility and affordability of quality healthcare for the rural people, stressing that the program would bring about a rejig of the health system of the state.