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Participants at the meeting
By Akanji Alowoludo, Bauchi
It has been stressed that for the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) to achieved in Nigeria, the issues of gender mainstreaming and adolescence must be properly addressed and defined.
The assertion was made by the Executive Chairman of Bauchi State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (BASPHCDA), Dr Rilwanu Mohammed while speaking during a One day UNICEF – GAC sustainability meeting held at the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), Bauchi on Friday.
He stressed that the issues of gender mainstreaming and adolescence are key to effective and efficient healthcare delivery services considering the fact that they are the largest target audience of such.
He said that, “for achieving the objectives of UHC, I think we need to mainstream gender in all our activities. That is the essence of the support we received from Global Affairs Canada (GAC) for 2 years. They have been able to mainstream gender into our lives, and programmes from the state down to the LGAs as well as facilities and communities levels.”
He added that,”We always think about gender in everything we do at the Agency, we need women to carry out some activities to support us, in most of the activities we are thinking of involving women for effective service delivery contrary to what used to be that men should do everything.”
According to him,”MCH Coordinators, our health facilities managers at the LGAs levels were trained to key in to the programme. For example, at the Government House, we ensure that there is a parking space separate for women and physically challenged persons in order to support them. It was part of the training.”
On Ward Development Committee, he said that it was realized that 99 percent of them are men leaving out women from leadership of the Committees saying that,”in the bill we just sent to the Assembly fir passage and assent by the Governor, 30 percent are women sọ that the Women are going to be used as advocates to discuss about those that are refusing to go for ANC during pregnancy or immunization for those that defaulted to go for those activities.c
Gender issues and gender balance are issues in our aspects and we have incorporative procedure for the activities, for example, we have 6440 mama-to-mama in all the 20 LGAs, 20 per ward and they are working voluntarily, we only motivate them, kitted them with the hijab and they are happy with it. That is what we are doing here today, how to sustain the program.
These are structures belonging to the communities and they must be permanent, even if women are moving away from the community, for any reason, someone must be there as a replacement. It is very important that the Media should support in this issue of gender mainstreaming so that we don’t only talk about it but practicalize it
When We talk about the support received for adolescent health it has been tremendous, they have peer groups, 2000 of them done by the same Global Affairs Canada (GAC) supporting Bauchi State. We give them award and support them to be able to be encouraged.
He stressed that, “We are going to institute every Quarter, meetings at the Ward levels to discuss what they are doing linking up with the facility so that data collation will be improved.”
He expressed appreciation that the GAC became part of the MoU in Bauchi state and supported it with 300m Canadian Dollar to augment other organisations like Dangote Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and UNICEF giving the State another 4 years financial support and One year technical support.
The State now has youth friendly centres across the state where health issues about adolescent are discussed and education given.
According to him, “Our objectives is to ensure that people access healthcare services at the health facilities, we want to discourage patronising local herbs especially by men. Our target is to promote and provide quality primary healthcare service delivery to people of the state.
