Data on hospital attendance will improve health in rural areas—Kwara commissioner

Commissioner for Health in Kwara state, Alhaji Atolagbe Alege, has said that regular attendance at both public and private health facilities by residents of the state will ensure accurate data collection for planning in achieving improved health care delivery system.

Speaking during first quarterly Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) meeting sponsored by Saving One Million Lives (SOML) programme, in 16 local government areas of the state in Ilorin at the weekend, the commissioner said that performance base of the SOML programme is focused on rural communities.

The commissioner, who said that the programme was targeted at achieving 99 per cent coverage of mother and child in terms of access to quality reproductive health care and family planning. He added that, the programme also aimed at improving the health of prevalent targets of such common diseases like malaria, HIV and escalating the use of insecticide treated nets particularly among rural dwellers.

Alhaji Atolagbe also said that, accurate data gathering on attendance of mother and child would help plan their reproductive healthcare and save people’s lives. He then charged M&E officers to record health service needs of rural people, because the most vulnerable people live in rural areas.

“The meeting was organized for monitoring and evaluation officers on the need to collate accurate data of women, children that visit both private and public health facilities during childbirths and for other purposes in their various local government areas. It is the accurate data that is gathered that would help plan and save lives, particularly, those of rural dwellers”, he said.

The commissioner, who enjoined the M&E officers to key into the programme for effective result and performance of the Save one million lives programme, promised to organise monthly reward for best deserving officers in the 16 local government areas of the state.

Also speaking, the state programme manager of SOML, Dr. Umar Hassan, harped on improved funding of the health sector to complement adequate manpower in the state.

He disclosed that a sensitisation programme would be carried out in major languages spoken in the state on mass media in all the 16 local government areas of the state, especially on routine immunization among the people.