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HEALTH

Yendi Municipal health directorate appeals for critical staff

The Yendi Municipal Health Directorate is asking for more hands to fill the critical areas in the health facilities to improve on quality healthcare services.

Date Created : 2/9/2018 7:10:56 AM : Story Author : GNA

Currently the Directorate can only boast of only 28 Community Health Nurses serving in 264 communities.

It also has only four prescribers for the Health Centres, only one staff nurse and six Midwives to carryout maternal health activities including conducting skill delivery.

Miss Hadjira Haruna, the Yendi Municipal Director of Health Services made the appeal at the 2017 annual performance review meeting of the Yendi Municipal Health Directorate at Yendi in the Northern Region.

Miss Haruna indicated that there were also inadequate motorbikes for outreach programmes and had to use their personal bikes for outreach activities and that affected the smooth running of the programme.

She said there were only ten CHPS compounds in the 31 demarcated zones, which made quality Healthcare delivery very difficult and stressed the need to post personnel to the area and address the infrastructural needs of the directorate as well.

She said inadequate water supply to most of the health facilities, also required urgent attention since water was very essential to their work.

She said the Municipality was sub-divided into six sub municipalities and each sub Municipality has a number of facilities under them for easy management.

Miss Haruna explained that, in spite of the numerous challenges facing the municipality, some achievements were also made in the year under review.

She noted that maternal mortality decreased from 13 to 10, Family Planning services increased from 16.7 per cent to 23.8 per cent whilst skilled delivery increased from 84.7 per cent to 87.4 per cent and vitamin ‘A’ coverage increased from 81.6 per cent to 87.6 per cent.

She explained that about 97 per cent of mothers practised exclusive breast feeding, the first trimester of Ante Natal Care increased from 29.8 per cent to 35.2 per cent including others.

On surveillance, Miss Huruna said the Municipality suspected five Meningitis cases and none was confirmed.

Alhaji Hammed Abubakari Yussif, the Yendi Municipal Chief Executive commended the Yendi Municipal Health Directorate for working hard with very limited resources such as material and human resources to achieve a lot.

He indicated that among all the departments and agencies in the Municipality, it is only the Health Directorate, which organises annual review meetings.

He reminded them that it was the maternal mortality, which was going to be used for the league table and urged them to record zero maternal mortality cases this year and beyond.

He appealed to the management to always furnish the Assembly with their reports and announced that the Assembly would provide motorbikes to Nkwanta and Konkon newly commissioned CHPS compounds to improve healthcare delivery in those areas.

He said the Gnani CHPS compound was proposed to be upgraded to a Polyclinic under the “One Million One Constituency” government Policy whilst the Yendi Hospital is to be upgraded to Teaching Hospital Status.

Mr Edward Acrachie Abu, Northern Regional Disease Control Officer, who represented the Regional Director of Health Services, noted that the Municipal Annual Review meeting would be replicated in entire region.

Dr. Ayuba Abdulai, the Medical Superintendent of the Yendi Municipal Hospital said the Hospital, which was a referral hospital had only three doctors and appealed for more doctors.