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The Federal Government has developed a comprehensive list of all health facilities in the country to have one database and avoid situations where there is lack of authentic list for carrying out studies.
The Master Facility List (MFL) will also ensure pooling resources together to reduce duplication of efforts and increase efficiency in the country’s healthcare system.
Speaking at the launch of MFL and Health Facility Registry (HFR) in Abuja, Minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole, said only about 20 per cent of the 30,000 health facilities in the country were functional when the President Muhammadu Buhari administration came on board.
This, he said, prompted government commence the rehabilitation 10,000 Public Health Centres (PHCs), adding that the plan was to make one PHC in a political ward operational.
“Each political ward has 10,000 people and so we will then have 10,000 PHCs offering healthcare services to 100,000,000 people, stated.
He pointed out that doctors planning coverage of interventions and researchers assessing health system performance needed MFL and HFR, adding that stakeholders often create and maintain their own list of health facilities because MFLs do not exist or are not easily accessible.
“We want to have only one database in the country to avoid a situation in the past where when stakeholders want to do a study, they develop their own list.
“Thus, having one MFL that could be accessed throughout the national HMIS environment will lead to greater efficiency, facilitate exchange of health information (through adoption of common data standards for facilities) and support monitoring of infrastructure and services in the healthcare system,” he stated.
Adewole stressed that health facility was not the building, but must have, human resources, commodity and there must be activities, adding: “The real measure of success of the project is when states take ownership of it.”
He further explained that MFL is a complete listing of health facilities in a country with information on the signature and service domain elements.
“The signature domain provides information on the health facility by location and unique identifier, while the service domain elements indicate the kind of services that are provided at the health facility.
“HFR will permit each state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, to carry out constant management of the list of health facilities within their jurisdiction,” he added.
He commended the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for providing the financial, technical and infrastructure support towards the achievement of the initiative for effective healthcare delivery system, stressing the need to mainstream it into the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund.
