Tomotiya’s ward health keepers prompt health referrals at grassroots — Oyo government

Oyo State government says its Ward Health Keepers distributed across the five local governments it was currently piloting Tomotiya Programme was to ensure a reduction in deaths of pregnant women and children below five years through prompt referral to health facilities, especially at the grassroots.

Oyo state Health Commissioner, Dr Taiwo Oladipo, who made this disclosure at the Tomotiya Coordinators meeting with the ward health keepers, said ward health keepers are critical within the communities to improve the health-seeking behaviour of community members, thereby ensuring people actually do go to health facilities for service.

According to him, “the current national health indexes show that Oyo State’s health index is still lower than the national average. But then, it also says that we still have a long way to go. The Tomotiya initiative is actually a means to look at the issues relating to our mothers and children.

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“Now, countries are no longer being ranked based only on financial indices, but also on health indices, like the infant and maternal mortalities. We might be doing well financially as a state, but we also need to look inward and see how to reduce those fatality indices so that we would come up top on our health indices.”

Chairperson, Tomotiya initiative and special adviser on health to the governor, Dr Funmi Salami said the Ward Health Keepers intervention in the participating LGAs is already yielding a significant decrease in the maternal and child mortality rates.

Dr Salami declared “these young people are actually taking responsibility for their communities and getting up to make a difference. They are up every day, going house-to-house to take care of the people in their communities and refer them to the private Health Care Centers. They actually picked out the cholera outbreak and told us and we had an immediate response to that ward.”

Dr Salami stated that alongside the Ward Health Keepers doing house to house visits to improve the health-seeking behaviour of community members, the Tomotiya initiative has embarked on digital health and the training of the children of traditional birth attendants.