28th February, 2017
Over 70 specialised mobile phones were distributed to family planning service providers in Edo by Marie Stopes International, a non-governmental organization (NGO), for data reporting.
The Regional Manager (South-South) of the organization, Mr Toochi Ohaji, who disclosed this on Tuesday in Benin, said the project was aimed at raising awareness on the use of contraceptives in the state.
He said that android phones were deployed to about 77 service providers.
“One of the things that the training has achieved is the training of mobile District Health Information System (DHIS).
“This is to help them carry out data reporting. It is also synchronised with the National DHIS, which means that whatever service that is provided by our service providers, the cell phones can report,” Ohaji said.
He said that the phones were also capable of reporting other health areas, like immunization, river blindness, roll back malaria, school health services, HIV and the rest of them.
“So, it’s a key achievement with supports from the USAID.
“We are happy that this project even surpassed the set objective in the state, we are happy that this event is a success,” he added.
Ohaji said that the project was funded by the USAID, in collaboration with Marie Stopes International, Palladium Group and Marie Stopes International (Nigeria).
“What we are doing today is the dissemination of the Family Health Plus project that was implemented in Edo.
“It is a health system-strengthening project that is supported by the ministries of health from all over the country, including Edo.
“What we did today was to share the lessons we had learned over the past three years from the project, the achievements we had made, and some of the challenges and the way forward,” Ohaji said.
According to him, one of the key successes of the project is that the Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) of the state has been moved to a higher level.
“To achieve this objective, we trained master trainers, we have service providers, and we worked very well with the state ministry of health and those of the local government councils.
The state Coordinator of Family Health Plus, Mrs Umeh Ndukwe, said that the awareness about family planning was still very poor in Nigeria and not always accessible to many.
She said that the project which would last three years in the state, was aimed at moving sexual health forward and to help couples have children by choice and not by chance.
Ndukwe said the objective of the project, which trained about 100 field workers chosen from primary health centers in the state, was to strengthen the overall health system of the nation.
It was also to strengthen planning uptake and raise the contraceptive prevalence rate to about 40 percent by 2018.
The Permanent Secretary, Edo State Ministry of Health, Dr Peter Ugbodaga, represented the Deputy Director, Primary Health Care, Dr Oniye Bello, pledged the readiness of the state to sustain the project.