NIGERIA – Nigeria has partnered with the United States Centre for Disease Control (US-CDC) to benefit over 1.7 million people living with HIV with anti-retroviral treatment.
The US-CDC has also supported the scaling up of immunizations against COVID-19, malaria and other disease outbreaks.
The recent partnership comes ahead of the upcoming Primary Health Care (PHC) Summit which is to take place on March 24th and March 25th 2022 in Abuja, Nigeria.
The summit will be under the theme “PHC Re-Imagining: Evolving A Resilient Platform for Achieving the Country’s National and Global Health Goals Via A Peri-COVID Era”.
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) will be hosting the private sector, government leaders and international partners including national elected leaders, top government officials and leading private sector executives at its summit.
The summit will be an opportunity to launch a bold new health programme aimed at transforming the under-resourced, weak primary health care system in Nigeria by leveraging private sector, international agencies and government collaboration.
It will also be a chance to present ambitious and attainable plans that will lead to tangible and large-scale changes to Nigeria’s primary health care system by the year 2030.
The US-CDC Nigeria Country Director Dr Mary Boyd expressed that the Center hopes that the upcoming PHC summit will be instrumental in enabling the highest quality of care for all by ensuring service integration, equity, accountability and resilience.
She also stressed that Primary Health Care saves lives, saves economies and is foundational to making health systems work better for all people.
“The United States has for decades partnered with Nigeria to invest in the health and well-being of Nigerians,” highlighted Dr Mary Boyd.
Mrs. Boyd also praised the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH), the National Primary Health Care Development Agency together with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and the multi-sectoral response for their concerted response in the COVID-19 pandemic.
She stated that COVID-19 has exposed pre-existing weaknesses in the healthcare system globally while inflicting devastating health and economic costs that many countries are still struggling to emerge from.
Despite the negative COVID-19 impacts, the pandemic has created a once-in-a-generation opportunity for transformational change not only in the health sector but other sectors as well.
“COVID-19 has highlighted the critical role of PHCs in pandemic response from testing to contact tracing to vaccination response along with its primary responsibilities of providing routine immunization, polio response, the epidemic of chronic diseases and cancers,” she outlined.
She further acknowledged FMOH and NPHCDA for calling all development partners together as well as taking advantage of the global health crisis to re-think the PHC delivery in Nigeria.
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