At second anniversary, Oyebanji unfolds his score card in Ekiti

CONTINUES FROM YESTERDAY

Health & Human Services

In the health sector we have embarked on a transformative journey towards universal health coverage, marked by significant advancements in leadership and governance, service delivery, workforce and capacity building, health promotion and disease prevention, health financing, and healthcare infrastructure. The Ministry of Health has implemented robust governance frameworks to enhance accountability and strategic alignment within the health sector.

To drive our health interventions, we developed a multi-year annual operational plan (2024-2026) to ensure better planning for capital projects that span more than a financial year, and prioritization of projects geared towards universal health coverage.

Across the three levels of care, we have embarked on an extensive upgrade of our infrastructure. These include;

• Installation of a new mammogram machine at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital to increase access to early detection of breast cancer.
• Complete renovation of the theatre suites, Accident & Emergency ward, dialysis centre and selected wards at EKSUTH to aid service delivery
• Upgrade of Ikole Specialist Hospital to a Federal Medical Center in line with our vision to become a regional health hub.
• Upgrade of the Ekiti State Drug and Health Supplies Management Agency warehouse to a pharma-grade facility, guaranteeing better storage of our drugs and consumables.
• Construction of the HMB/Doctor’s Quarters Road, including a bypass to reduce burden of health workers going to give care at the hospital.
• Ongoing renovations for nine General Hospitals in Ijan, Ijesa Isu, Ilawe, Okemesi, Efon Alaaye, Iye, Ayede, Ilupeju/Itapa, and Ifaki. These facilities are also being equipped with best-in-class equipment that help improve diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
• In the course of the second year anniversary, we will be laying the foundation of a multi-purpose facility at EKSUTH, it will comprise of 80-bed ward, conference centre, modern pharmacy, a library, VIP suites, offices etc

Beyond infrastructure, we have instituted a series of capacity-building, professional development and training initiatives to enhance the skills and capabilities of healthcare professionals and service providers. These workforce capacity developments include:

• Training of 50 Senior-level staff from the health sector on a leadership and management executive course by the Lagos Business School.
• Training of 34 mid-level and senior health managers on Healthcare Management and Leadership by the Center for Epidemiology and Health Development, Deloitte Nigeria, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
• Providing opportunity for 8 of our staff (including the chairperson house committee on health) to attend a fully funded seminar in China for 2 weeks to learn about public health surveillance and public health management.
• Training of 350 facility-level staff across 120 health facilities in quality improvement modalities to enhance health service delivery across the state.
• Training of 220 health workers on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

With the perennial concerns about disease outbreaks, the state continues to remain on high alert. The use of rapid response teams spread across all wards in the state, and our decentralisation of incident management structures to the 16 local government areas, enable us pick up on early warning signals, and allow us respond appropriately. This work may appear thankless, but the efforts of our health team have helped curtail potential epidemics and limited our exposure to any disease outbreak this year to the barest minimum.

I am happy to inform you that these investments are yielding measurable outputs and outcomes. This year alone,

• More than 210,000 girls (ages 9-14) received the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine, enabling us to achieve 91% of our target coverage.
• We have identified and placed on treatment, 93% of the estimated cases of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Our ability to test, treat and help suppress viral loads for people living with HIV/AIDS, means they can live a healthy, fulfilling and productive live.
• To keep our children’s immune system healthy and support their rapid growth, we provided more than 600,000 vitamin A supplements, to children under 5 years, allowing us to achieve 81% target coverage. I must thank my dear wife, Her Excellency for her consistent support and her readiness to always lead the campaigns.
• Mindful of the rise of non-communicable diseases, we screened 1,600 civil servants, focusing on hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. This is a pre-cursor to a state-wide health promotions and awareness campaign taking place this month of October tagged “Know Your number, Control Your Number”. I am supportive of this initiative and I encourage everyone in Ekiti to come out en-masse to get screened.

Last year, I announced that under our flagship health insurance program (Ulerawa), we provide an explicit but guaranteed package of care, which includes free delivery across our 177 primary health centres. This year alone, over 4,000 babies born were delivered free of charge, and more than 400,000 persons have accessed free care, at our primary health care facilities courtesy of Ulerawa. I am happy to inform you that this year also, we have now extended coverage of services under Ulerawa to all 3.6million residents of Ekiti including pensioners. As at today, over 9,000 pensioners have enrolled  in the program.

Social Welfare

Ekiti has not been exempted from the cost-of-living crisis which has proven a huge burden for Nigerians across the country. Determined to provide relief to our people, our Cash Transfer Unit (SCTU) and Labour-Intensive Public Works (LIPW) intervention channels have continued to be sources of succour to our people. Our people have continued to receive needed support on a regular basis.

We enrolled 154,003 households including 581,503 individuals on the National Social Register (NSR). This provides a pool of vulnerable individuals that we can extract beneficiaries from for our different social schemes

We undertook the disbursement of N1.04 billion at N25,000 each to 24,780 National Social Register (NSR) beneficiaries and 16,876 Rapid Response Register (RRR) beneficiaries under the National Cash Transfer scheme.

We disbursed a total of N181.8m between October 2023 to July 2024 to 1326 individual beneficiaries under the Labour-Intensive Public Works (LIPW) Scheme. We also disbursed N174.8m to another set of 2000 beneficiaries under the LIPW scheme between March 2024-September 2024. The combined total under the LIPW scheme is N356.6m

Our senior citizens continue to occupy a special place in our welfare plans.  Through our social investment schemes, we are addressing the needs of our vulnerable senior citizens by providing regular monetary support. Apart from our regular interventions, we distributed gifts to our senior citizens on the International Day of  Older Persons

We disbursed a total of N250m at the rate of N25,000 to 10,000 individuals at 5,000 per month for 5 months between October 2023 and February 2024 under the fuel subsidy withdrawal palliative scheme.

Following unfortunate fire disasters, we disbursed N41.3 million to victims in Ekiti state

We disbursed a total of N300m under the EKCARES Social Transfer scheme to 5000 (1751 male, 3249 females) beneficiaries. The beneficiaries are a mix of aged, people living with disabilities, chronically ill and urban poor in our State

We have disbursed N320m to 2000 (627 male, 1373 female) beneficiaries and N185.4m to 1,159 (322 male, 837 female) beneficiaries making a total of N505.4m under the EK CARES Livelihood Support Grant scheme to household businesses

N89.4M was also awarded as livelihood grants to 559 beneficiaries through the Payment Service Provider (PSP) channel

We released N331m for purchase and distribution of items to indigent persons across the state.

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