The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib, has said the agency will within the next six months, recruit 202 doctors, 3,806 nurses and 24,461 health workers.
Speaking at a media briefing on the official launch of ‘Community–based Health Research, Innovative Training and Services Programme (CRISP), at the headquarters of the agency in Garki, Abuja, Dr Shuaib said the recruitment is meant to address the issue of inadequate human resource for health at the community level.
He recalled that the agency in 2019 declared a state of emergency on the number of mothers and children dying everyday in Nigeria.
He said NPHCDA decided to set up a national coordination centre known as National Emergency Maternal and Child Health Intervention Centre (NEMCHIC) to provide oversight on reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health plus nutrition in Nigeria.
He stated further that: “The availability of skilled health workers in our PHC facilities is critical to curbing maternal, perinatal, neonatal morbidity and mortality. In pursuit of this and other goals for advancing primary healthcare in the country, you may recall that the Federal Ministry of Health in collaboration with NPHCDA held a well-publicised Primary Health Care summit in March 2022, during which we presented a 4-point agenda for PHC re-imagining.
“As part of this agenda, we discussed the need to close the gaps on the adequacy and distribution of human resource for health at primary health care level.
“To be guided by evidence, we followed this with a national health facility assessment in 2022.
“Findings from the assessment revealed that only 1.8% (463 out of 25,843) Primary Health Care Facilities in our country have the minimum number of required Skilled Birth Attendants (SBA) which is 4 per facility. Aside from the gross inadequacy, there is the problem of unequal distribution of available SBAs in the PHC facilities.”
Dr Shuaib said to address the challenge, the agency has come up with an innovation called Community-based Health Research, Innovative-training and Services Program (CRISP), to be launched on Monday the 22nd of May, 2023 at the Banquet Hall of the State House.
He said CRISP is a partnership between the Teaching Hospitals, Federal Medical Centres, NNPHCDA, State Primary Health Care Boards, Local Government Health Authorities and the communities.
He added that CRISP is targeted for implementation across the 36 states of the federation and the FCT and it will be funded by the Federal Government of Nigeria with support from development partners, philanthropists, among others.