By Tobias Lengnan Dapam
Save the Children International (SCI) Nigeria and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) partnership through the INSPIRING project announced the donations of medical equipment, instruments and consumables worth over NN100 million to 30 public health facilities in Ikorodu LGA of Lagos state and 35 health facilities in Jigawa state.
This was contained in a statement issued yesterday by Dr. Adamu Isah, Chief of party, inspiring project.
He said the donation includes basic medical equipment, such as, oxygen analyzers, weighing scales, BP apparatus, stethoscopes, respiratory timers, infrared thermometers and pulse oximeters.
Others are cold chain equipment such as; refrigerators, vaccine carriers, nutrition equipment and consumables including cooking gas and food items.
In addition, “we are donating Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) commodities, including, hand sanitizers, liquid soap, disinfectants, disposal gloves, masks and many others.
The donation was made in response to the health facilities assessment conducted by Save the Children International in Ikorodu LGA in Lagos and Kiyawa LGA in Jigawa.
It was also aimed at addressing the gaps found during a recent Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) post training supervision conducted in SCI supported health care facilities.
Therefore, this donation will further enhance the efforts of the Lagos and Jigawa state governments toward improving the quality of healthcare service delivery in the states.
He said, “the INSPIRING project is making bold statements at every level of the health system, from community capacity strengthening to health quality improvement and policy environment for sustainable health improvement for children under the age of five in both states. We are very grateful to the governments of Lagos and Jigawa states and indeed at the National level through the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) and National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) for providing the leadership. This donation is another demonstration of Save the Children International’s commitment to contribute towards an accelerated reduction in child death from pneumonia and other preventable infectious diseases in Nigeria.”
On her part, Mercy Gichuhi, Country Director, Save the Children International Nigeria, said “Healthcare facilities should be ready to provide quality services to their patients, especially children affected by pneumonia and other childhood diseases. But this cannot be achieved if health providers lack access to the tools and resources they need to save lives. Save the Children is not only concerned about availability and capacity of healthcare providers, but also with the tools they need to provide quality services,” said,
Kunle Oyelana, Managing Director of GlaxoSmithKline Nigeria (GSK), said “experiences from the global management of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that we all must support initiatives that will enhance better healthcare systems and improve the wellbeing of the people.
“As the world gradually eases most of the COVID-19 lock downs, it has become clearer that we all must support efforts of the government at both the local and national levels to ensure that the community gets better healthcare delivery systems that would improve their lives. At GSK, our mission is to help people do more, feel better and live longer. It is for this reason that we are in this partnership which allows us to significantly contribute our quota in support of the Nigerian Government, particularly in the area of primary healthcare delivery. We are optimistic that the equipment and assessor’s donated today will be efficiently used to the benefit of the community.”