Every country has a responsibility to ensure that its citizens have access to the health care they need, when and where they need them. Health is a right for the very poor and vulnerable population groups living in the most remote parts of Nigeria, Prof. Isaac Adewole, the Minister of Health, has said.

 

Adewole, however, noted that interventions to improve the health of individuals and communities were not available in areas where they were most needed.

 

He said that despite the efforts, financial and geographic access to health services remained significant challenges to achieving improved maternal and child health outcomes.

 

The minister who spoke at the review meeting and champions award for the Community Health Influencers Promoters and Services (CHIPS) Tuesday in Abuja said the CHIPS Programme was a significant effort aimed at advancing our efforts towards the achievement of Universal Health Coverage through specific primary health care systems reforms.

 

“As you know,” he said, “Universal Health Coverage cannot be achieved without significant investment in the community level component of PHC, which is the focus of the CHIPS Programme.

 

“The CHIPS Programme is designed to improve on the village health worker concept promoted over the years by the Federal Government. It aims to integrate all the multiple, inefficient and poorly coordinated community health volunteer efforts from existing community-based programmes into a single well-coordinated programme, taking advantage of the multiple resources that have been previously deployed.