Worried over shortage of human resources in the health sector in Oyo State, the state government, in conjunction with Pathfinder International Nigeria, has domesticated the Task Shifting and Task Sharing policy to train more health workers.
The policy had been adopted by the Federal Ministry of Health to meet shortage of human resources in the country.
Speaking at the launch of the policy held at the Kakanfo Inn and Conference Centre, Ibadan, the Oyo State Commissioner for Health, Dr Azeez Adeduntan, declared that though the state has domesticated the policy, health workers must know their limitations.
“What we are doing is to ensure that no woman dies in the course of child delivery, and one of the ways to do it is this task sharing and task shifting.”
The Oyo State Family Planning Coordinator, Mrs Adeola Awakan, stated at the event that one of the major barriers of access to essential health care services in Nigeria was shortage and inequitable distribution of the appropriate cadres of health workforce to deliver the services where they are most needed.
Awakan said, “In Nigeria, there is a shortage of virtually all cadres of health care workers, resulting in poor utilization of thousands of health facilities in the country for essential services.”
She maintained that the development of the National Task Shifting and Sharing Policy is a major leap towards the scaling up of access to effective and evidence-based essential health services in Nigeria.
She defined task shifting as the rational distribution of tasks among health workforce teams and movement of specific tasks where appropriate from highly qualified health workers to health workers with shorter training and fewer qualifications to use human resources more efficiently, increase capacity and achieve health care coverage within a constrained budget.
Yusuf Nuhu of Pathfinder International Nigeria disclosed that the organisation works to provide country-led solutions to ensure universal access to sexual reproductive health and
rights (SRHR) in collective efforts towards attaining universal health coverage.
“We work with local partners, government, CSOs and the media to promote SRHR and access to quality healthcare services. It is based on this mandate that Pathfinder supported the Oyo State government to adapt and develop the state’s Task Shifting Task Sharing Policy”.
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