The Oyo State Government today made their collaboration with Sustaining Program and Partnership on Reproductive Health Transformation (SuPPoRT) official. The partnership will validate the mapping of health facilities in Oyo State and also give the present administration a means to identify the state of its health facilities.
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Muftau Ayoola represented the commissioner for health at the Secretariat to flag off the Oyo Health Facility Map validation and there, he stated that the Oyo State Government wants more collaborations with partners like SuPPoRT to help Oyo State improve its health sector.
He said: “This initiative is very important in the sense that one of the pillars of this administration is Health, and we all know that health is wealth. We know we cannot do it alone but to collaborate with partners that are here. So, this SUPPORT initiative is a very big thing, which will be of assistance to the good people of Oyo State.”
“If you click Oyo State website, you can easily see the number of facilities that are providing family planning and how the place is being utilised. So, this is a good step that has a long way in improving health facilities in the state. At the same time, the people can make use of the facility in so many programmes; be it TB, malaria or HIV.”
The Technical Assistant Consultant of SuPPoRT, Mrs Adesola Fanimokun, also spoke at the event and stated that the well-based map would enable the state government to make positive changes in its health sector.
She also added that the people of Oyo State will be able to access the link from anywhere and find out details about their preferred health facility.
In her words: “We are here to validate the mappings of health facilities in Oyo State. It is a well-based map such that anybody can have access to the link from the comfort of their homes and offices.”
“You can click on the link and access the Oyo State map. Click on a local government and a particular facility of your interest; the partners who are in that facility, the family method, which the facility offers, and the size of the technical officers and the staff strength of that facility.”
“We have donors and partners, international organizations coming into this place. Rather than all of them coming to Ibadan and stay within the centre when they have access to this map, the state will be able to present this map to them, show them the concentration of partners and they will be able to identify the LGA that does not have partners’ support.”
“It will also help the state itself to identify what it has. All the data that we put together on this map already exist as individual data, but now that they are joined together, it helps the state to know the situation of its health institutions.”
“From that map, you can tell how many health facilities the state has; how many PHCs, and by the time you click on any of them, it gives you details. It helps with what the present administration is doing in the area of health. So, this will harm them with the data of each facility or which facility needs more attention or equipment and staffing.”
She went on to explain that the initiative has been configured to assist the State Government and build on what the Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) has already done.
“We know the government needed it and we supported the government to do it. It is to build on what Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) has done; the strategy that NURHI has used, which has been proven to work. So, the aim is to sustain the state government to be sure that they have the power to continue to do it,” She added.
The Director, Planning, Research and Statistics, Dr Abass Gbolahan stated that this partnership has digitized the Oyo State Ministry of Health.
He said; “If you look at what is happening now globally, the whole world is going digital. And we are also looking at a situation whereby we can get information first hand. So, what this initiative wants to do for us is to harness the data, which we already have in the state.”
“We have the longitude and latitude of most of our facilities but they have assisted us in putting them together to have any information in such a way that if anybody gets into our site and wants any information on health facilities in the state. If you just click on it, you get everything you need.”
“Secondly, for partners that are coming to work in Oyo State, we have the existing ones on that site. So, any new partner that comes into the state doesn’t even need to ask us where they want to work. They already know where existing partners are.”
