Cross River: Operate based on your limitations, mobilisation officer charges healthcare workers

By Chris Njoku

Mrs Nsa Ekpenyong, Mobilisation Officer for the Cross River Primary Healthcare Development Agency (CRSPHCDA) has charged healthcare workers in the state to operate based on their limitations

Ekpenyong made the call on Saturday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), at the end of a five-day training for frontline healthcare workers in Cross River organised by the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health (FMH).

NAN reports that the training which commenced on April 15 was an initiative of the Minister of Health, Dr. Mohammad Pate to enhance the competencies of 120,000 healthcare workers in public health institutions in the nation.

The mobilisation officer said as far as Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) were concerned in Cross River, they had available equipment to work but if a client presented a case that was beyond the PHC, they were expected to refer.

According to her, a major lesson they had learnt in the five-day training was that referring a case at the PHC level shows how efficient a health worker is.

She said health workers at the PHCs don’t need to show that they are gurus in a health situation because in the cause of experimenting instead of referring a client and harm was done the health worker would face the law.

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“When a client presents a case that is beyond your level of operation, don’t kill yourself, just refer, at every level of PHC, we operate based on our limitations, don’t exit that.

“In fact referring a case at the PHC shows how efficient you are as a health worker,” she said.

Speaking further, Ekpenyong noted that she expected lots of improvements in the healthcare delivery in the state as the training would be cascaded to the 18 Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the state and also the PHCs.

She added that the health workers had been taught that at the community levels, health education was key to enhancing healthy living and they would concentrate on education to close the knowledge gap of the people.

Similarly, another participant of the training, Mrs Ekaete Ekpenyong said the training would improve service delivery in the state and enhance the achievement of Universal Health Coverage.

Ekpenyong emphasised that they were going to carry out advocacy visits to the advisory committees in each of the LGAs in the state to ensure that they got involved in the training while ensuring that it got to all facilities in the LGA.

She however noted that going forward, the state needed to ensure that it has Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and job aids in all its health facilities.

“All our old modules should be reviewed to ensure that we print new ones and paste them at every point of service delivery, so it will serve as a guide when we are rendering services at facility levels,” she added.

NAN also reports that the training was sponsored by the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) through Management Sciences for Health in Cross River and Zamfara to strengthen the health service systems for the best public health outcomes.