Saving One Million Lives Programme for Results (SOML P for R)
.has donated 20 units of refrigerators to Cold Chain Unit under the Anambra State
Primary HealthCare Development Agency –ASPHCDA for the preservation of Immunization
vaccines in Anambra State.
Speaking during the hand-over ceremony of the refrigerators
to ASPHCDA at Chukwuemeka Odimuegwu Ojukwu
University Teaching Hospital,
Amaku, Awka, the State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jeo Akabuike charged the
recipients to make good use of the equipments
and ensure that the purpose for which they are provided are effectively
carried out.
He also advised the health
workers in the unit to be more committed to their work and always inform him of
any challenges encountered in course of discharging their duties. Some of the refrigerators
presented to ASPHCDA
Dr. Akabuike stressed the importance of immunization in the
State health sector while the Cold Chain Unit plays a special role in the
sustainability of the immunization programmes. He said that health intervention
through immunization has helped to reduce the mortality and morbidity of
children that would have been affected by immunizable diseases such as measles,
tuberculosis among others; as prevention is better than cure. ‘‘The actual road
part to healthy living is Immunization as it is the Immunization status of a
child would determine what the child would be tomorrow’’, he added.
Responding to
Commissioner’s charge, the Executive Secretary, Anambra State Primary
HealthCare Development Agency, Dr Chioma Ezenyimulu represented by the Head
Immunization and Disease Control of ASPHCDA, Dr John Ndibe promised that the
equipment would be put to proper use as the vaccines would get to the users in
optimum condition.
Dr. Ndibe appreciated the Saving One Million Lives (SOML)
Programme, adding that the project would achieve all the indicators so that
Anambra State would continue to benefit in future.
Saving One Million Lives Programme for Results is an initiative
of Federal Government-led intervention effort focused at improving maternal and
child health through a result-based partnership with States’ Ministries of
Health.
The programme, which
is being funded from a N140 billion Naira ($500 million) credit that had been
negotiated by the Federal Government with World Bank, from which $1.5 million
was disbursed to states and the FCT as grants, sought to deliver high impact,
evidence-based and cost effective health interventions based on six pillars.
The pillars of SOML P for R are maternal, newborn and child
health, childhood essential medicines and increasing treatment of important
childhood diseases, improving child nutrition, immunization, malaria control
and the elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV.
The programme is also based on an approach to
structure the flow of resources to pay for results, which are desired goals,
outcomes and impacts rather than simply paying for processes or reimbursing activity
costs.
By Ebele Egoh
(PRO, Anambra State Ministry of Health)
