Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq on Thursday flagged off the state's Community Health Influencers, Promoters and Services (CHIPS) programme to strengthen access to primary healthcare services in the state. Representatives of World Health Organisation (WHO), United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), AFENET, Rotary International and other development partners commended the AbdulRazaq administration for the huge investment in the health sector which has brought positive indices to the sector within the last three years. “As part of the efforts at revitalising the system is demand generation for the services available within the primary healthcare facilities.

The careful selection and training of these 200 CHIPS and 40 Community Engagement Focal Persons will go a long way in deepening quality healthcare delivery to the remotest corners of the State,” AbdulRazaq said at the event held at the State's Banquet Hall in Ilorin. “As a government, we are making deliberate efforts to ensure that our primary healthcare facilities are able to perform their roles in meeting the healthcare demands of their immediate communities. To achieve this, we have embarked on massive rehabilitation and upgrade of primary healthcare facilities, including construction of new ones where necessary. “We have also embarked on massive recruitments of qualified and trained existing ones to manage our various health facilities across the state.”

The governor said his administration has also commenced the payment of minimum wage to various categories of workers, including health workers in the state “When I came into office, we paid a huge backlog of counterpart funds. We have also been able to sustain for his part, explained the programme is a great achievement and big step to the underserved populations and work towards raising awareness and stimulating demand for primary health care services by the community. The role of community-based health workers residing in the community in attaining this cannot be overemphasized,” he said.

Rasaq said the community workers would provide basic services in their respective communities, ultimately linking the communities with services in primary health care facilities. Executive Secretary of Kwara State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr. Nusirat Elelu said the state is trying to re-imagine Primary Healthcare to a fit-for purpose PHC as envisioned by Governor AbdulRazaq who has shown unprecedented commitment and leadership in revamping the PHC system in the state.

“Everyday Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five children. Community-based programmes are the most effective option to reduce mortality and the least expensive presently available,” she said. “One of the community based interventions is the CHIPS with the goal of contributing to maternal and child morbidity and mortality by creating demands for and equitably increasing access to essential primary health care services.” The State Coordinator for WHO Saliu Abdullahi said that they would continue to support the state in its effort to improve access to healthcare. “We at WHO are very much aware of your laudable programmes to the people of Kwara State especially in the area of disease prevention and outbreak responses. We are equally aware of the giant strides the government has made by improving the state health indices from where it was to the current state by making available the needed resources,” Abdullahi said.