The meeting which was well
attended by the stakeholders in the Ministry of Health took place at the
popular Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Alausa-Ikeja, Lagos, on
Thursday, March 7, 2024.
Facilitator of the event
was The Challenge Initiative (TCI) which is implemented by Johns Hopkins Centre
for Communication Programme in Nigeria, supporting government to implement and
scale up family planning services and interventions, especially among the urban
poor.
The discussion of the TWG principally
centered on review of family planning in the year 2023; family planning year
2023 service delivery data and the presentation of 2024 family planning annual
Operation plan (AOP) focusing essentially on annual intervention plans in line
with current challenges and realities.
A major challenge
highlighted at the meeting was the near absence of data validation which the
participants unanimously agreed that there is an urgent need to resolve it.
Dr (Mrs) Folashade Oludara,
Director, Family Health and Nutrition in the Lagos Ministry of Health, spoke
extensively on the activities of the group. “We have compositions from all
family planning game changers, the technical persons from various facilities and
agencies; we also have a lot of our partners within the family planning space. We
are here to review our data, the annual data, and see whether we are doing fine
as a state or we have gone backward, so that is the reason why we are here.”
Oludara disclosed that the
TWG is a coordination platform which guarantees opportunity of bringing people
of various backgrounds within the same ministry together to identify challenges
and discuss the way forward as far as family planning services are concerned. “The
Technical Working Group (TWG) is a coordination platform, it gives opportunity
to bring people together, led by the ministry of health to identify challenges
and discuss the way forward as far as family planning services are concerned
across the state. So it involves all the stakeholders, we have the line ministries,
we have the agencies, the ministry of health is leading, health service
commission, primary healthcare board, we have Facility and Accreditation
Monitoring Agency (HEFAMAA), they are all here, we have development partners,
FPA, The Challenge Initiative, Society for Family Health, and so many, even we
have leaders of association of community pharmacists, they are all here to
review our data together and look at where we are, and what the challenges are?
If there are any, and proffer solutions by way of recommendations to be able to
avert future occurrence.”
Speaking on the
best way to address concerns raised at the meeting especially the issue of
validation of data, Oludara said, “The issue of data is long overdue, it has
been a perennial problem, and the issue actually stem from the data collection tool right from the federal
ministry of Health. We expect the federal ministry of health to update the data
collection tool which is electronic, the District Health Information System (DHIS).
This is supposed to collect Data from all the service delivery points, but at
the time it was initially introduced, it only concentrated on the public
facilities, but we have been on the neck of the federal government to establish
and enlarge that platform to be able to accept even the community data that is
being generated by the community pharmacists and private medicine patent
vendors and other private hospitals that are not health facilities, so that we
will be able to see everything holistically, that is why we are losing a lot of
data.”
Oludara also disclosed that inability to validate
data could be as a result of pressure of work and exhaustion caused by
inadequate manpower. “Another data issue we discovered, because of the staff
shortage, workers do not have enough time or they are not entering all the
data, as and when due, because there is a particular time in a month that the
state must forward data. So there is an issue with our data validation. People
out of pressure of work, just decide, if I enter all these ones, I would not
meet time, the time allotted to me to enter this data, so I better stop there; not
knowing that, you are not doing justice to the state. So those are the issues
we brought out today, and the officers in charge, they have taken note of that.”
The issue of community pharmacists dealing with sharp
disposal was also brought to the front burner. “The issue of community
pharmacists, they are insisting that government should assist them more in what
we are doing and we simply told them we will see to that, especially in the
area of sharp disposal. We will talk to our principals on how that can be done
and the logistics for that. What we mean by sharp are all those needles, all
those syringes, leftover, used needles. Ordinarily in those days, they would
put them in normal bin and people would get injured and infected from them. However
as a state we ought to have left that. They said government should give them
the enabling environment to be able to dispose them appropriately, which I feel
they are not asking for too much.”
On implication of inadequate data in a state
like Lagos, Oludara maintained that the importance of data cannot be
over-emphasised adding “Data is very important specially when it has to do with
planning because if government wants to provide social benefits and data is not
there, it would be extremely difficult to do that, and to be able to reach the
underserved. So it is good to have data, complete data, it reflects the problem,
it is easier when the government has data, the government has to deduce what to
do next, and would be able to see clearly what the issues are and proffer
solution that will avert those problems.
“So without data you cannot do effective
planning, so it is important, when you render data, you are doing favour to
everybody. You are not doing favour to just the government, the government is
you and I, so we are doing favour to ourselves by rendering data. If you have
seen so many people and you are not rendering Data, it shows you are not doing
anything, that is the message we gave them and I am sure they have gotten it,”
Oludara asserted.
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