…caution health officials against selling, hoarding commodities
Residents of Ekiti State will now have access to free anti-malaria drugs as the state government has distributed anti-malaria commodities to two hundred health facilities across the sixteen local government areas of the state.
Speaking at the flag-off of the programme, the state Commissioner for Health and Human Services, Dr Oyebanji Filani noted that the distribution of the malaria commodities would help to reduce cases of malaria and would increase patients access to malaria drugs.
Represented by the Permanent Secretary, Mrs Olusola Igotun, the commissioner urged the benefitting health facilities to judiciously make use of the anti-malaria commodities, saying that the present administration would do everything to ensure that residents have access to quality health care services
Also, the General Manager, Drugs Management Agency, Pharmacist Michael Oyeniran said the drugs would be distributed to residents for free adding that anybody caught selling or hoarding it will be sanctioned accordingly.
In her speech, the Programme Manager, Mrs Helen Bankole noted that in 2019, Ekiti State was selected alongside five states which are Lagos, Abia, Borno, Imo, and Rivers to be funded by the World Bank on the Immunisation Plus and Malaria Progress by Accelerating Coverage and Transforming Services Project.
She explained that the state promptly complied by setting aside a counterpart funds as part of the project’s requirements while members of the Program Implementation Unit were nominated and duly approved by the World Bank.
According to her, the State Steering Committee for the project was inaugurated in 2021 with quarterly meetings held till date.
Mr Bankole noted that as part of the project’s implementation steps, a total of 5 Non-State Actors were shortlisted for Ekiti State and they all submitted their proposals to partner with the state in the provision and distribution of malaria commodities, Following a transparent technical and financial evaluation of the proposals using a Quality-Cost Based Selection approach, Solina Health submission performed favourably over others and thus adjudged the preferred NSA to partner with Ekiti State.
The project manager said Ekiti is the first state on the World Bank-funded Malaria Project to have concluded the NSA-engagement and payment of mobilization fee culminating in the commodities distribution to 200 Health facilities that were selected based on their target population as specified by the project.