In its bid to boost
Maternal Child Healthcare (MCH) in the country, the federal government
on Friday commissioned the N1.1 billion National Ambulance Service.
The 100 ambulances are to aid transportation of women and children to health facilities where they can access care.
The chairman of the
Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), Gen. Martin
Luther Agwai (Rtd) made the disclosure during the launch of the National
Ambulances Services at Kiyi PHC, Chibiri Kuje Area Council if Abuja.
The SURE-P chairman
noted that the services would be implemented in 1000 facilities across
the country and 250 referral hospitals in the 36 states and the FCT.
According to him a lot
of the dividends of the programme had been felt in most local government
saying, “as at August last year, over 1. 2 million women have received
care in SURE-P facilities while 200,000 babies have been born
successfully in the centres.
“These ambulances are
expected to ease the transport difficulties our women and children face
when trying to access care, or health personnel who have need to refer
cases they cannot handle effectively”, he said.
Executive Director of
the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Ado
Muhammad said that 50 per cent of deaths among women and children was
caused by non- availability to referral services.
Muhammad maintained that
the initiative was the first of its kind saying, “These should serve as
the entry point for wider services to tackle the second and third delay
for pregnant women and children.”
Also, the Project
Director, SURE-P MCH (maternal and child Health), Dr Ugo Okoli noted
that each ambulance cost about 11m and that a 100 was purchased.
She said , “We intend to
deploy them to states, and then to clusters, we work in clusters, so if
we put one here it will serve the four primary health centres, we
intend to put two in each state and the extras to be managed by field
managers."
Meanwhile, the
ambulances would be distributed across the states but would not be under
the control of states nor local governments, rather under private
initiatives and field managers to be supervised by the federal
government.
Daily Times report
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