Incentives would make health workers function in rural areas ― Stakeholders

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3 years ago

Stakeholders in primary health care delivery in the country, on Monday, called on three tiers of government to provide incentives to health workers to make them work in rural areas in order to improve access to primary health care services in the grassroots areas.

Speaking at a town hall meeting on primary health care delivery in the North-West/North Central zones in Ilorin, themed: rethinking rural healthcare, building a safer community; the stakeholders lamented deplorable conditions of infrastructure in primary health care centres, among other factors in many states.

The town hall meeting organised by Fridabs Solacebase communications in partnership with Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism and supported by Macarthur Foundation was attended by civil society organisations, health care workers, media, policymakers and implementors.

One of the stakeholders and executive director of Fridabs Solacebase communications, Mallam Abdullateef Abubakar Jos, said that inadequate skilled staffing and lack of essential drugs are some of the other factors discouraging access to primary health care centres in the country.

“There are some areas that health officers do not want to work. When you do your assessment properly, there should be incentives to make them want to work there. Nobody wants to work in rural areas even in developed countries. Over there, it’s because they have access to infrastructural development in form of social amenities in their rural areas that you see some of them working there but most of our rural areas lack social amenities. So, in compensation for this, you do something to make them want to work in these areas. That’s one of the reasons for this programme. It’s a town hall meeting to encourage collaboration among policymakers and implementors.

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“It’s a rural health accountability project and we are looking at how we can make primary healthcare work and make primary health care accessible at the grassroots in order to address most of our health challenges.

“If you look at it, most of our health challenges are being taken to tertiary institutions. There are supposed to be referral cases. And you can’t blame the people because most of the primary health care centres are not working.

Mallam His, who said that the organisation was into investigative journalism with concern for accountability and transparency and good governance, “to ensure that the deployed resources to the primary health care centres are judiciously used and deployed human resources are judiciously spread. And we hope to continue to do this to achieve desired change.

He also called on the present Kwara State government to make needed change against deplorable conditions of primary health care it met on the ground to ensure the provision of qualitative health care services, health education and ultimately access to primary health care services to people.

Also speaking, the executive director of the Kwara state Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr Nusirat Elelu, who said that primary health care is the first tier of health care for the majority of people, especially in the grassroots, added that there is huge decay in the PHC sector in the country.

Dr Elelu said that the present administration had carried out holistic overview of the sector, which she said had led to the repair of the decay it met on assumption of duty in form of employment of qualified staff, provision of medicine, as well as rehabilitation and reconstruction of some PHCs in many parts of the state.

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Incentives would make health workers function in rural areas ― Stakeholders

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Incentives would make health workers function in rural areas ― Stakeholders