Ben Ezechime, Enugu
The Enugu State Primary Health Care Development Agency (ENS-PHCDA) says Enugu State has done very well in child, maternal and Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) space this year.
The Executive Secretary of ENS-PHCDA, Dr Ifeyinwa Ani-Osheku, disclosed this to newsmen on Monday at the end of UNICEF 2023 End-of-the-Year Review Consultation meeting held in Enugu.
Ani-Osheku said that the state had done very well in thematic critical areas that UNICEF covers on child, maternal, PHC, nutrition, supplement provisions and community health education levels.
“Enugu State is at the frontiers of what is happening today in the child, maternal and PHC space and I guess that is why Enugu State is selected to host this UNICEF critical review meeting for the year.
“We have done well in nutritional balance for children and using wide-spread nutritional education to increase the nutritional level of our children through UNICEF support.
“We have successfully carried out two bi-annual events of Maternal, New Born and Child Health Week in all PHC centres in the state.
“In the week, we focused on supplementing our pregnant women and nursing mothers to ensure they carry pregnancy and feeding the infant in a healthy way with minimal or no cost to the family.
“We have significantly decreased the morbidity of children in the state through meticulous and timely immunization campaigns and implemented a sound nutrition plan and campaign through the assistant of UNICEF.
“The ENS-PHCDA has supplemented children with Vitamin A for development of eye sight and sharp brain as well as de-worming programme to ensure healthy development of children in the state,” she said.
According to her, we are grateful to UNICEF for supporting our cold-chain storage system especially for our vaccines.
The executive secretary said that UNICEF-supported cold-chain storage facility had made Enugu State successful in routine and special immunisations whether in fixed post and mobile or house-to-house immunisation this year.
“The functional cold-chain storage facility in the state has led to the state stocking enough variety of different vaccines that are kept ready and at a right and effective temperature for all forms of immunisation in the state.
“UNICEF has supported our immunisation with functional community or local awareness and health education programmes and publicity campaigns that had made our immunisation penetration and coverage in the state very wide.
“These various UNICEF support have assisted greatly in maintaining optimal health of millions of children and mothers at the community levels in the state,” she said.
The review meetings reflected key achievement in the following areas, which include: key innovations and learning; partnership; constraints; actions required to address performance constraints, lessons learnt and best practices.
