By Asmau Ahmad
The Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria said it has prioritised quality of care as a key strategy for improving the health of mother and newborns in the country.
It said having learnt from this, the FMOH was now in the process of extending this to cover older children and adolescents.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, said this in Abuja, at the 2021 session of the Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Coordination Platform for Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent and Elderly Health plus Nutrition (RMNCAEH+N).
According to reports, the federal ministry of health inaugurated the RMNCAEH+N multi-stakeholder partnership coordination platform on October 12, 2020.
The platform is to aid the attainment of Universal Health Coverage as well as the Sustainable Development Goals in the country.
The platform also was drawn from a wide cross-sector membership, which includes, but not limited to, governments, parliamentarians, media, regulatory bodies, philanthropists and donors, development organisations, academia and professional bodies.
Ehanire, represented by the Director, Family Health Department of the ministry, Dr Salma Kolo, said that Nigeria had made considerable progress in the area of child and maternal health
“We can confidently say we made some significant progress, scored some points on our main resolve on this platform, which is to overall coordination with key focus on creating synergy, aversion of duplication, complement efforts, leverage additional resources and maximise impact on outcomes,” he said.
The minister congratulated the leadership of the Core group, Emir of Tsonga, Dr Haliru Yahaya and Dr Edugie Abebe.
He said that leaders of the core group sat through all the sessions in the last four quarters to see that it fulfilled her coordination mandates and provided technical direction to the subcommittees.
“I am glad to inform members that at the onset, a key deliverable that emanated from the core group was the development of an annual operational plan for RMNCAEH+N, which was launched in March this year, and form our basis for assessment today.
“The plan is not aimed to replace existing regular work plans, but to address specific bottleneck identified in the delivery of quality services to Women, children, adolescent and the elderly, including nutrition and health programmes,” Ehanire said
He also stated that the ministry started implementing the plan by looking inwards for better internal coordination and cohesion as it created platforms for departments and programs to interact.
“Notable among these is the retreat involving programmes managers from National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and the department of Family health which has significantly smoothen out government’s operations and is confronting the spirit of virtualisation which makes people work in silos.
“It is instructive for us to note that in this one-year space, the programme-based technical working groups have been significantly restructured and repositioned for better performance.
“These include the Child Health Technical Working Group, Reproductive Health and Family Planning Working Group, Adolescent Technical Working Group, Nutrition Partnership, Health Promotion Forum, and the Healthy Aging partnership.,” the minister said.
Earlier, the Permanent Secretary, Mr Mallam Mahmuda said that one year was long time enough time to assess what the ministry had been able to achieve in terms of Coordination, Resource Mobilization, Quality Technical Delivery Data, Information Management and Accountability in RMNCAEH+N delivery.
Represented by the Director of Reproductive Health, Dr Kayode Afolabi, the permanent secretary said that the aim of the meeting was to discuss challenges and proffer solutions to do a quick but frank review of RMNCAEH+N quality delivery issues.
Yahaya, Emir of Tsonga, said that the subcommittees were charged with the responsibility of executing the relevant terms of reference and provide feedback to the general body at the annual gathering.
