The Acting Executive Secretary, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Primary Health Care Development Board, Matthew Ashekeni, has disclosed that 12 additional health care facilities had been approved to be constructed in the six area councils.
He made this disclosure on Sunday in Abuja during an interview with journalists.
According to him, the FCT Minister, Mohammed Bello gave the approval recently to expand the health care service delivery for the growing population in the territory.
Giving the analyses, he stated that two Primary Health Care (PHC) facilities would be constructed in each of the six area councils to ensure that FCT residents have access to quality health care.
He said that in 2017, 18 new PHC facilities were added to the existing ones to boost health care delivery.
He added that nine were constructed under the SureP programme and another nine were provided by Satellite Town Department.
In his statement, “The recent mapping we carried out in the PHC facilities confirmed to us that many of them need to be attended to, looking at the infrastructure or the service delivery in terms of the human resource component.
“There are gaps we need to address urgently, that is why the minister has graciously approved 12 PHC facilities to be constructed in the six area councils to fill in some gaps.
“The FCT population is estimated to be five million, there is need to have health facilities that will meet up the health needs of the growing population” he said.
Ashikeni said that human resources was key to functional primary health care service hence the FCT administration has engaged the services of 50 Volunteer midwives under Save One Million Lives programme.
He added that the centers would not be starved of staff as more midwives have been posted to various health centres across the territory, adding that the process to adopt 203 additional midwives trained by the Federal Government’s Midwives Service Scheme (MSS) has been approved by the minister.
