The Lagos State Primary Health Care Board (LSPHCB) has appealed to the 57 local governments and development council chairmen to collaborate with the state in providing cooling systems for vaccines to ensure their efficacy.

Its director, research and statistics, Temitope Balogun-Alo, made the appeal on Monday during a PHC dialogue, with theme,“Strengthening the Primary Health Care System: A Joint Leadership Dialogue”.

Ms Balogun-Alo said this during a technical session titled, “Primary Healthcare in Lagos – Current State, Governance, Financing and the Roles of LGA Chairmen”.

She emphasised the importance of increasing funding for PHCs, particularly immunisation which lacks effective and functional cooling systems in the state.

“We need where to keep our vaccines. Most of our facilities, if not at least over 90 per cent, already have solar refrigerators where we use to keep the vaccines itself.

“How do we maintain the cooling once those vaccines have come out of that fridge because it must not be broken?

“That is what makes your vaccines effective when you want to give it either as a routine immunisation to a child or it could even be an adult vaccination like we saw for COVID-19, cholera, for the diphtheria outbreak that we had recently.”

According to her, ice packs are placed in coolers to maintain coolness, stressing the need for better resources to acquire fridges, freezers and transportation for operation.

Ms Balogun-Alo called for increased budgetary allocation to PHCs, provision of operational costs and creating targeted budget lines for immunisation, RMNCAH+N and emergency preparedness.

The director emphasised that the LSPHCB must strengthen collaboration with LGA leaders to maintain and upgrade existing PHCs for quality service delivery.

She called for increased efforts to bridge the human resources gap, equipped ambulances for emergency response and referral services.

Responding, Sesan Olowa, chairman, Conference 57, pledged that local government chairmen in Lagos would budget more than N500 million to one billion naira in 2026 for health, adding that human resources would also be improved at PHCs.

He said efforts would also be taken to improve infrastructure, governance system, monitoring and performance to provide quality healthcare to residents.

Akin Abayomi, Lagos State commissioner for health, stressed the need to organise a primary health care financing reform retreat between the state and the local government leaders to strengthen accountability and relationships.

Mr Abayomi noted that Lagos has 326 PHCs covering a population of 30 million residents, disclosing that the state requires 2,400 PHCs to meet the World Health Organisation benchmarks.

According to him, half of the state’s PHCs require significant upgrades to provide quality health care, noting the suboptimal state of the PHCs makes residents bypass PHCs to access care at secondary and tertiary hospitals.

The commissioner, however, said the state government had invested time to conduct a needs assessment on PHC infrastructure to provide evidence-based information for improvement.

He reiterated the state’s commitment to improving healthcare services to its citizens through the revitalisation of PHCs across the state. 

(NAN)