The Federal Government has been called upon to implement Section 11 of the National Health Act by allocating 1% Consolidated Revenue Fund (CRF) for the implementation of the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF) to assist states governments to revitalise Primary Health Care (PHC) infrastructures.

This call was made Monday at a press briefing by the Center for Social Justice (CSJ) following a monitoring exercise of the PHCs in Kaduna.

The Center’s Programme Officer, Good Governance, Victor Emejuiwe, also called for the provision of adequate human resources and equipment at the PHCs.

He stated that the Center commended the performance of Kaduna State Government as one of the few states in Nigeria that has keyed into the Federal Government policy of revitalisation of PHCs.

However, the Center in spirit of transparency observed that there are still more things to be done when it called on the state government to address issues of poor water supply, lack of functional renewable energy installations, lack of adequate space and lack of security in the PHCs.

Others include inadequate maternal and child health equipment, non-observance of 24 hours service, disproportionate distribution of staff and reasonable service provision in the PHCs.

Making recommendations to the state government, the Center also called on the state to, through the state ministry of health, recruit more staff at the PHCs and make adequate provision for the training and retraining of existing staff. It added that casual and volunteer workers be also empowered with necessary skills and compensation.

The CSJ also made some recommendations to the legislature and the CSOs as a means of achieving perfect functioning of the PHCs.

It advised the state ministry of health to make public all its activities on its website to ease access.

The Programme Officer reiterated the need for the PHCs to be perfectly and fully functional saying it will cut off traffic at the General Hospitals and enhance the hospitals’ primary functions.