By Danjuma Attah, Gombe
Vaccine Network for Disease Control in conjunction with major stakeholders within and outside Gombe State have called for increased funding for immunization activities in the State.
During a Multi-stakeholder technical workshop to co-develop, review domestic resources mobilization for State immunization and Primary Health Care Financing, the stakeholders also called for increased budgetary allocations for Primary Health Care in the State.
Stakeholders present at the meeting included senior officials of the State Ministry of Health, State Primary Health Care Development Agency (PHCDA), State legislature, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, Ministry of Local Governments, Civil Society Organisations (CSO’s) among others.
Chika Offor, Chief Executive Officer of Vaccine Network for Disease Control pointed out that there are proven indicators that many children in Gombe State have never taken immunization at all.
According to her, it therefore becomes pertinent to call for strengthening of the system particularly, increasing budgetary allocations for Immunization and Primary Health Care.
Chika Offor said, “We noticed that Gombe has 44.7% zero doze. That means there are children who have not taken immunization at all.
“Some of the challenges are bureaucratic. If a simple thing like writing a memo can delay you from getting what you want, it should be corrected so that things can move smoothly.
“The Primary Healthcare Centres should work in such a way that people can walk in and take vaccines but if the PHC’s are not revitalised, then there is a big problem. I’m happy with the stakeholders who have exhibited passion to see things work better”, she told our correspondent in an interview.
She explained further that because of the existing situation, more needs to be done by channeling more money to health in Gombe State so that children can access health services.
“All of us have come together to discuss and collaborate to formulate different strategies, look at the old strategies they had, see wether it is good, if not good, develope new ones and integrate all the strategies together so that you make sure that there is health for all in Gombe State”, she stated.
Director Disease Control and Immunization, GSPHDA, Dr. Musa Mustapha Abdullahi, who represented the Executive Secretary of the Agency, commended Vaccine Network for coming with the initiative of mobilizing more resources to PHC adding, “to us it’s a wake up call, it will ginger us to do more”.
He stated also that, “one of the key components of the law is funding which is between 60% and 40% for the State and Local Governments. If we can get that, to my opinion, that is a changing moment for PHC and Immunization activities”.
Speaking from the perspective of the CSO’s, Chairman of Gombe Network of Civil Society (GONET), Yusuf Ibrahim, spoke on the need for partnership and collaboration between State and non state actors stressing that, “there are issues civil servants and politicians don’t see, but we see it from the perspective of the community because we represent them”.
He pointed some of the problems to include, having a well built health facility (structure) with no skilled personnel or even when there may by a lot of personnel, they may be unskilled.
He said, “what needs to be put in place now is not only the structures but skilled personnel and create training opportunities for the unskilled so that at the end, the services will be efficient”.
At the end of the workshop, the organisers built consensus from participants and also secured commitment of relevant MDA’s and stakeholders to actively make use of their positions and offices to enforce the identified domestic resource mobilization strategies.
Global Health Advocacy Incubator and Gavi, also supported the one day workshop.
