By Iliya Kure
Kaduna State Government in northern Nigeria, has set up a 28-member Child Spacing Technical Working Group (CS TWG) to help deliver its mission of scaling up the uptake of child spacing services. The TWG will do that through coordination and advocacy for full implementation of Kaduna State Costed Implementation Plan (CIP) for child spacing.
The CS TWG is also to ensure the implementation of task shifting/sharing policy in the state. The policy provides that Community Health Extension Workers (CHEWS), be trained and empowered to perform some of the duties of midwives, especially in communities lacking in midwives.
Inaugurating the CS TWG, State Commissioner for Health and Human Services, Paul Manya Dogo, tasked members to work hard towards delivery of their mandate.
“The Child Spacing Technical Working Group will constitute an integral part of the State MNCH Technical Working Group, and will carry out its mandate by coordinating and advocating to the state stakeholders on broad strategic policy and funding issues including, but not limited to, effective implementation of the CIP, increasing/creating child spacing line items budget, and working with the media to promote uptake of child spacing services,” he said.
The Commissioner said the TWG is made up of people with capacity in “Advocacy on reproductive health/child spacing; financing for contraceptives; product forecasting; procurement mechanism; system strengthening; contraceptive use and demand; as well as quality assurance methods, public health”
Represented by a Director in the Ministry, Abdulkadir Ahmed, the Commissioner tasked the CS TWG members to justify the confidence reposed on them.
Responding, Chairperson of the CS TWG, who is the Executive Secretary of Kaduna State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, (SPHCDA), Hadiza Balarabe, expressed appreciation to the government for the wisdom in setting up the committee to help mobilise for uptake in child spacing services.
Balarabe called on members of the committee to rise to the challenge of not only achieving the 46% CPR target for the state by 2018 from its current 22%, but to work towards higher target.
The CS TWG is expected to function through six sub-committees, namely (i) service delivery; (ii) supply chain; (iii) demand creation; (iv) supervision, monitoring and coordination; (v) finance; (vi) policy and environment.
