The Federal Government says with the launch of Technical Advice – TA Connect will foster the drive to drastically reduce poor indices arising from Maternal and Child deaths in Nigeria.
TA Connect came into being after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a few years ago, identified a critical gap in the manner in which Technical Assistance was being provided to states and in a departure from the normal way that organisations come into being.
The Director of Public Healthcare Revitalisation, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, Dr. Daniel Otoh stated this in Abuja during the official launch of TA Connect in Abuja.
Dr. Otoh who represented the Executive Director of NPHCDA, Dr. Shuaib Faisal, explained that TA Connect will play a vital role in supporting NPHCDA’s implementation of the emergency declared on maternal and child health in the country.
“We are targeting, especially now that we have an emergency on Maternal and Child Health, which NPHCDA is like the centre and this is where we target because that is where they are focusing – maternal and child health – and this is where TA Connect is actually working.
“So it is like a collaboration to now reduce maternal mortality and infant mortality to a great extent. So, this is a huge milestone and this is a big and laudable initiative which will now help to reduce and then make sure that our focus is also maintained.”
Executive Director, TA Connect, Dr. Lilian Anomnachi, while speaking to journalists, revealed that the organization will concentrate its technical assistance at providing capacity building for facility managers to further strengthen service delivery at primary health centres.
Anomnachi also stated that supervisors in Primary Health Care supervisory bodies at states and local government areas are earmarked to benefit from the capacity boost.
“With the current focus on strengthening primary healthcare services in Nigeria, TA Connect is an innovative platform set up to respond to technical assistance priorities aimed at promoting sustainable improvements in primary healthcare systems performance and at increasing the uptake of Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health and Nutrition (RMNCAH+N) services across the country.
“We envision becoming the leading enabler of cost-effective TA solutions even beyond the Nigerian borders and will in turn provide increased collaboration, coordination, learning and impact to all our partners and stakeholders.
“We have two main programmes where we anchor. So we can work with the facility managers; and the PHC strengthening programme where we build the capacity of the facility managers across seven domains – from supply chain, M&E, Data Management, human resource management.”
“You would agree with me that if a manager’s capacity is built, then he knows what to look out for and what to do for his or her workers, he doesn’t need someone coming from outside to tell him that ‘oh you’re gonna have stuck out of drugs’ ‘oh my employees are not coming to work’. He already knows how to checkmate those things.
TA Connect is currently in Eight states across the northwest and northeast, with Lagos being the only state from the south, however, the organization is already scaling up to 10 states.
