The new scheme which is carried out under the SURE-P programme on maternal and child health; covers mothers who attend ANC clinics, give birth in a Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) under the supervision of skilled birth attendants/midwives and those who bring their children forward for routine immunisation.
Minister of State for Health, Prof. Muhammad Ali Pate, and the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr. Ado Muhammad, affirms that this move is part of government’s assurance to Nigerians on judicious spending of proceeds accruing from partial removal of fuel subsidy.
In an interview with The Guardian Newspaper, Pate said, “One of the basic service pillars which will sustain the Midwives Service Scheme (MSS) is the maternal and child health (MNCH) aspect of the SURE P. We piloted a ‘conditional cash transfer’, which has never been tested at this scale and to incentivise mothers to attend ANC, be attended to by skilled birth attendants when they are about to give birth and being rewarded for immunising their children. That was tested here at Karu (Federal Capital Territory) and it was able to raise ANC attendance in that particular ward by 100 per cent. So, that was something that was new. It was not there and it is going to be continued. From now until December, the pilot is going to be expended to six states in 2013 even more under the SURE programme.”
Speaking on the recent approval of the deployment of 3,426 health workers to rural PHC facilities nationwide which is part of the government planned to save one million lives by 2015; Pate said “We started with the MSS, we are now expanding it with the use of the SURE-P on maternal and child health component focusing on the demand side to provide conditional cash transfers, to building the human resource capacity in the front lines.”
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