FCTA to revive 50 community health committees

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Primary Health Care Development Board said it had concluded plans to revive 50 Community Ward Health Committees to ensure efficiency and enhanced functions of Primary Health Care (PHC) facilities.
Disclosing this, while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, the Acting Executive Secretary of the board, Dr. Mathew
Ashikeni, explained that the board had been working with FCT Health Secretariat to reactivate all community health committees in all their PHC facilities.
He said the board would start with the reactivation of not less than 50 of them in the first quarter of this year.
Ashikeni said community members in such committees would be trained and given proper orientation on their responsibilities and roles in ensuring quality health service delivery.
He stated that the communities must take ownership of healthcare facilities in their areas to ensure that health workers posted to the community performed their duties diligently.
According to him, such committees, which comprised village head, women leaders and youths, would be also responsible for the mobilisation of the community members to use or access health care services being provided by PHC facilities.
Said he: “At this point, we are working to ensure that community members own the facilities and participate in the management of these PHC centres These will enable the services being provided by health workers to be given at the right time, by the right people and at the right cost.
“The community is closest to the health facility; they are there everyday, there is no supervision provided by my board that will be better than that of the community.
“We deploy officers to monitor our PHC facilities monthly and you will agree with me that those officers cannot be in the 230 health facilities we have in FCT at the same time.”