As part of efforts to strengthen the implementation of RI finance strategies at the state levels, the National Association of Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), Kaduna State chapter, developed a routine immunization (RI) people’s scorecard and presented its finding at a dissemination meeting in the state.
The objective of the dissemination meeting was to present the findings of the RI people’s scorecard developed using set of indicators to identify areas of weaknesses of RI financing in the state. The RI scorecard will then be used to plan for advocacies towards overcoming the identified weaknesses. The dissemination meeting was conducted on the 7th of December 2019 in Kaduna.
Overview of the Dissemination meeting
Before the dissemination meeting, the RI scorecard commenced with a training organized by the dRPC-PACFaH@Scale, on the 27th September 2019 in Abuja. The training was to prepare the participants on RI scorecard indicator development for use during the RI people’s scorecard in Kaduna state. After that, a one day planning meeting was organized in collaboration with other stakeholders, and officials of the Kaduna state primary healthcare development agency, to develop a checklist that will be used in developing the scorecard; as well as to identify the primary healthcare centers (PHCs) to be visited for the assessment, identify a date for training the data assessor, a date for the field work exercise, and another date for the scorecard dissemination. Earlier, on the 3rd of December, the validation of the data analysis was conducted where officials from the state primary healthcare development agency, State Ministry of Health and other agencies attended. The data for the assessment was collected from some selected PHCs in six local government areas the state, namely; Zaria, Soba, Kaduna North, Kajuru, Jema’a, and Jaba . These local councils were chosen from the three geo-political zones of the State (North, Central & South).
Main Findings in the scorecard
The people’s scorecard found out the following:
- Vaccines coverage in the state is 74%.
- The national target for Penta 3 is 85%, 74% coverage can said to be on track
- Vaccines and supplies stood at 83%
- The availability of RI bundle vaccines in adequate quantities.
- CSO engagement in RI activities in the state stood at 58%
- CSOs participate in conducting visits to health facilities and proffering solutions to identified issues
The final Outcome of the scorecard:
The overall assessment shows that Kaduna state scored 77% in the peoples RI Scorecard.
Recommendations
The recommendations made are:
- Government should do more in the areas of vaccine distribution to PHCs
- Government should also engaged more with CSOs and the communities were this
PHCs are located
Next Steps
- Printing of the copies of the RI people’s scorecard to be used for advocacy to government officials.
- Sharing the RI scorecards to policy makers and implementers.
