Residents of the Ondo state, especially, community leaders have been called upon to take proper ownership of any government or individual infrastructure projects being done within their various domains and prevent people from vandalizing the property provided for them.
Banji Ajaka, the state Commissioner for Health, made the call on Wednesday in Akure, the Ondo state capital at a one-day training workshop organised by the state Global Fund/National Agency for the Control of AIDS/Resilient Sustainable System for Health/COVID-19 Response Mechanism.
Ajaka, who was represented by the deputy director, public enlightenment, Ministry of Health, Rosemary Falokun, said the call became necessary in order to encourage the government and individuals to bring more developmental projects to the rural areas across all the 18 local government areas of the state.
According to him, all the communities in the state should provide solutions to their problems at their various locality because government alone cannot do it, hence the need for them to take ownership of their health and change their behavioural pattern.
“We have some organizations in the state, complementing the efforts of the state government in order to improve our health sector because government cannot do it alone. They voluntarily released themselves to visit these grassroots facilities in order to carry out their exercise for the prevention and control of diseases and others in the state,” he said.
While Jumoke Abereowo, the Ondo State Programme Officer, Global Fund/National Agency for the Control of AIDS/Resilient Sustainable System for Health/COVID-19 Response Mechanism Project, who spoke on the essence of the training said their projects was centred on identify the major gaps that was affecting the quality health services at the local governments.
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Abereowo said, “the projects is being implemented across the 18 states in Nigeria. In which, Ondo state is one of the benefiting state and the projects is centred on strengthening the infrastructure and also the facilities based organizations in the state. And also to provide solutions to identify gap that is coming out from the primary healthcare facilities in Ondo state communities.
“In Ondo state, we have five major local governments where the projects is being implemented which includes; Owo, Akure South, Akure North, Ilaje and Ondo West and the projects engages 15 based organizations, working to ensure that there is a success in the state with the representatives of these three networks, People living with HIV Aids, Tuberculosis Consistence and Malaria Consistence (ATM).
“We believe that government cannot do it alone hence the need for communities to take the ownership and the responsibility to address certain issues that emanated from the facilities where they were given health services.
“This is a call to our government because we believe that they can still do better, they should provide medical personnel, health volunteers like Ad-hoc staff that can be paying stipends and yet they will be improved in their knowledge and skills which will also strengthening the health facilities.
“We also call on the Ondo state residents not to backed out on any government or individual infrastructure projects, instead they should communal come together to ensure that they protect any projects that comes into their various communities.”
Austin Ogunleye, the Programme Officer, Justice Development and Peace Centre (JDPC) Ondo state Diocese, who also spoke at the training said during their projects monitoring in some rural areas, they discovered that it was very difficult to get health officers to each of these health facilities.
According to him, this showed that the state have limited health personnel and called on the government to do something about it in order to improve health sector in the state.
