Admin|25 April 2016|7:45am
HIV Rapid Testing Quality Improvement Initiative team, Cross River State comprising of SACA, CRSPHCDA, Ministry of Health and FHI360 yesterday met with the Director General, Cross River State Primary Health care Development Agency, Dr. Mrs. Betta Edu.
Speaking, the leader of the team Mrs Ekaette Ekpenyong said the essence of the visit is to brief the DG on the steps taken so far to achieve
quality HIV testing and result in the state.
According to her, the team was formed by State Government and trained by FHI 360 to tackle challenges of HIV result testing and to ensure quality services in HIV & AIDS interventions.
Mr Timothy Yakubu, Technical Officer of the project gave encomium to the State Governor, Prof Ben Ayade over his giant stride in health sector. He said the team will carry out assessment of many primary health facilities and render technical capacity building on the spot where they find the health worker not working according to guidelines.
Mr Yakubu said due to limited capacity of their funders, they are present in Calabar South and Calabar Municipality LGAs.
Responding, Dr Betta Edu thanked the group for coming and lauded them for the proactive moves taken so far to ensure improved practice of HIV testing and result reporting. According to her, in the past they have been cases of HIV testing with false negative, or false positive. Health workers don't follow safety guidelines and are not keen on ensuring quality in service delivery. She emphasised on the provision of adequate logistics for health workers and the prevention of HIV commodities stock outs, noting that this issues as small as they might look can hamper the success of the project.
In her words, the dynamic DG said with adequate commodities, proper logistics and adequate capacity building of health workers on ground, success and sustainability of HIV/AIDS project will be achieved will be achieved. She appealed to FHI360 to expand to more LGAs, noting that the two LGA's covered by the program is too insignificant. "I urged you to expand your scope of work to other LGAs".
Finally, Dr Edu applied to FHI360 to take the issue of monitoring and close supervision seriously, pleading with the team to always go out for routine monitoring to ensure quality improvement. The DG assured them of the agency's support to achieve the project as she reminded the team to always share data for proper follow up by State Government. She intimated them of His Excellency, Prof. Ben Ayade's support for the full actualization of the project.
Charles Ekanem
Media & Publicity Aide to the DG, CRSPHCDA
