CSO raises alarm: Kaduna PHCs’ challenges legion

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has observed that, despite the remarkable improvement in the renovation of primary health care centres, Kaduna state is still faced with a lot of challenges requiring the attention of stakeholders.
The NGO also challenged the state Ministry of Health to publish the actual details of PHC facilities renovated and their locations in the website, in line with the spirit of transparency and accountability.
CSJ made the observation while briefing newsmen on the report of its monitoring exercise on the state’s PHCs in Kaduna at I-Care Women and Youth Initiative conference hall in the state.
The briefing, presented by the Center’s Programme Officer, Good Governance, Victor Emejuiwe, noted with dismay that despite remarkable differences witnessed from the renovated PHCs, there were still faced with poor water supply and lack of functional renewable energy installations.
Other challenges facing PHCs, according to CSJ findings, include lack of adequate space, lack of security, non observance of 24hours services, inadequate Maternal Newborn Child week (MNCH) equipment, disproportionate distribution of staff and reasonable service provision.
The Centre recommended that state government, through the health ministry, should recruit more staff to be deployed to PHCs and make adequate provisions for training and retraining of existing staff.
It enjoined the state to partner with the federal government, internationalpartners and the private sector to identify PHCs, which require upgrades and make its contributions to access the 1per cent CRF for PHCs revitalisation.