The federal government is working towards redesigning the community health workforce programme in the country, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has said.
The Executive Director of the agency, Dr Muyi Aina, made the disclosure in Abuja during the Knowledge Sharing and Learning Exchange Agenda on Community Health Workforce (CHW) Programmes in Low and Middle Income Countries organised by Results for Development (R4D), in collaboration with other partners.
Represented by the director, primary healthcare systems, Dr Aina said the country was working towards using a blended model of trained professionals, as well as people who had not been trained in institutions, as against the previous method of using only lay workers or people who had not been trained.
He said, “NPHCDA is to redesign and look at the correct people who should be in this programme. We want to look at how much they are paid, unlike in the former programme that they were just treated as volunteers and given a stipend of N5, 000 a month as salary or allowance. Because as a result of that, they were not well motivated, and left whenever they got alternative jobs.
“So, we are looking at a model where we will have the right cadre of people, where we will be able to remunerate them adequately thereby motivating and keeping them in order to have a sustainable programme. And where they will be able to provide the right services to Nigerians and help improve the health system, among others.”
He added that the blended model would likely be finalised before the end of July.
R4D’s Country Manager and Programme Director for Nigeria, Felix Obi, said that Universal Health Coverage (UHC) could not be achieved without taking healthcare to people in the communities.
He said there was the need for the government to prioritise funding for community health workforce in Nigeria, noting that, “It is important to recruit them and provide them a level of stability by paying them a living wage because they are making a lot of sacrifices.”
He further said the organisation conducted the research to find out how different low and middle income countries were tackling the challenges of providing healthcare at the community level.
He said, “The reason is that globally we make efforts to achieve UHC. Most countries have realised that we cannot continue to only rely on health workers who work in hospitals and clinics, because it is important that the gaps at community level are addressed. So, we looked at how community health workers were recruited, trained, how they were paid, and utilisation of digital health innovation. We wanted to find out evidence from different countries and how they would be useful to Nigeria.”
Dr Linda Vanoto, R4D’s Senior Programme Director and Lead for the Community and Primary Healthcare Practice, said the organisation believed that the findings of the evidence shared could help countries to learn from one another in terms of what worked and some challenges faced so that they didn’t repeat them.
