The Federal Government has reaffirmed it’s determination in enhancing safe care guidelines in all parts of the Nation.
The Director Reproductive Health, Federal Ministry of Health Dr. Kayode Afolabi stated this during a two-day Orientation and Data quality assessment on national self-care guidelines in Kano on Tuesday.
He said that the exercise was organized by the Ministry in collaboration with Pathfinder International towards improving quality sexual and reproductive health services in general.
The Director added said that self-care was simply making every individual responsive to his or her health need.
“We want to ensure that individuals have awareness as to know their health status and what should be done at the right time.
“We want individual to have some basic tretaken that can be done before linking to primary health care.
“Kano is among the state in the country to strategically to implement and orient them on self-care,” he explained.
Afolabi advise the general public to position themselves to benefit from self-care which was a shift in universal health coverage and a huge opportunity.
According to him, alot of things has to bee done especially when it comes to disease like malaria, environment should be clean to reduce it.
He maintained that the Ministry was also working tirelessly in creating awareness and channels of accessing self care ,aimed at uplifting the health Status of the General populace.
Dr. Amina Aminu , the country director of Pathfinder international , who spoke at the event said that the exercise was a very important step towards improving accessing and quality of sexual and reproductive health services in general.
“I am honoured to be working very close with federal ministry of health and Kano state ministry of health to adopt and push for the implementation of self care guidelines in Nigeria.
“We just came out of a very crucial COVID:19 pandemic era young people in rural areas do not to have access to proper health care”, she said
Aminu further explained that it was important for every individual to have access to care for their own health.
She lamented that, Nigeria does not have number of service provider especially nurses and doctors(those that are highly skilled needed to cater for population of people)
“Maternal and infant mortality is very high in the country,once more women and young people know their health status they can help manage the situation,” she added.
Dr. Rajab Ashiru, Director Public Health and Disease Control of the Kano state ministry of health, said people would accept self-care without spending money every two to three months for family planning.
Ashiru said that the new initiative, strategy would improve uptake of family planing and and reduce need for service providers facilities.
Stakeholders members include supervisors of maternal and child health care(MCH) in all the 44 local government area in the state.
