The Community Health Practitioners’ Registration Board of Nigeria (CHPRBN) has enjoined community health practitioners to invest in continuous professional development and training in other to reduce Nigeria’s high maternal and child mortality rate.
Registrar of the board, Alhaji Bashir Idris, gave the advice Sunday during the inauguration of the new head office complex of the board in Abuja.
He said, “We need to develop and strengthen our training so that we can help to reduce the infant and maternal mortality rate across Nigeria. We work at the grassroots and are the first point of contact with the patients. So community health practitioners should be trained and practice in the way they have been trained to reduce the poor maternal, child and infant mortality indices.”
He said the new office building would enable staff to work with the highest standards of professionalism and in an environment that fosters growth and innovation.
Idris said before now, the board had spent 31 years without a permanent accommodation, adding that it was achieved through resources generated by the board with no other support.
While lamenting the proliferation of unqualified personnel in health facilities, he called for the employment of community health practitioners in primary health care centres in the country.
President of the National Association of Community Health Practitioners of Nigeria (NACHPN), Alhaji Kabiru Ahmed Yahaya, said the association had put in place a mechanism to address quackery in the profession.
He said that the failure of some state governments to adopt the task shifting and task sharing policy had hindered community health practitioners from rendering quality health services in those states.
He said the number of community health workers in the country is grossly inadequate and called on the government to employ them and provide them with all necessary infrastructures to practice effectively.
