Orodata to launch tool for checking status of primary health centres

A foremost civic tech organisation, Orodata Science, is set to launch a tool for checking the status of primary health centres in the country.

In a release on Friday, the organisation said the ‘CheckMYPHC’ platform would encourage sub-national participation in governance while strengthening health institutions.

Orodata Science has been combining data science, technology and research for over 10 years, to spearhead advocacy for fiscal transparency and accountability in Nigeria.

The organisation explained that the ‘CheckMYPHC’ platform was developed to empower government, journalists, citizens and all other key stakeholders with access to rich baseline data and resources necessary to understand the true status of primary health centres across the federation towards making more informed decisions in such a sensitive sector.

The statement said: “CheckMYPHC was developed under the African Data Hub (ADH) initiative, and is a part of a larger project called the My PHC Project which has 3 facets; the FrontLine Data Collection Programme, the FrontLine Investigative Programme, and the digital platform called Check MyPHC.

“On the platform, users can explore the status of primary health centres by state and local governments across Nigeria, download data, and request more. They can also search for specific primary health centres (PHC) in their communities, compare them with one in another community, and view key insights on building structure, infrastructure, personnel, and more.

“The platform also has a key feature that allows users to provide feedback based on their experiences using a PHC. This is to enable users—community champions and community organisations to capture continuous and real-time situations of PHCs in their localities to guide better interventions towards revitalising dilapidated and abandoned PHCs across Nigeria.

“With the recent claim by the Nigerian government of disbursing over 12 Billion Naira to NPHCDA Gateway through the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF), non-state actors need to support stakeholders, with essential baseline healthcare data necessary for effective service delivery through optimised resource allocation, tracking of spending, and strengthening the feedback loop between the government and citizens.

“This maiden version of CheckMYPHC platform holds data from primary health centres from 6 states (Sokoto, Taraba, Benue, CrossRiver, Anambra, Osun) from the 6 Geo-political zones (North Central (NC), North East (NE), North West (NW), South West (SW), South East (SE) and South (SS)) in Nigeria unearthing insights and actual state of over 345 PHCs in these hard to reach areas. Phase 2 of the Data collection anticipates reaching over 1000 PHC in 16 states as this will gain momentum immediately after this Launch.”