Oyo Health Ministry Releases 2020 Health Performance Update and Scorecard

The Oyo State Ministry of Health has today, Thursday, 1st of July launched a scorecard for the year 2020 to measure governor Seyi Makinde’s performance in the Health Sector.

Speaking at the launching of the 2020 health performance update at the Parliament Building, Oyo state House of Assembly, Ibadan, the Permanent Secretary of the Oyo state Ministry of Health, stated that the move is to promote public inclusion, generate feedback and inform the general public about the policies and activities of the ministry.

He stated that the booklet is divided into 11 chapters, each of which highlights Governor Seyi Makinde’s health manifesto and a summary of Oyo State’s health-related initiatives since the start of the current administration.

He praised the governor for making health care one of his administration’s four pillars, claiming that the government had made health care inexpensive, accessible, effective, and equitable to everyone in the state.

Mr. Abass Gbolahan, Director of Planning, Research, and Statistics, highlighted that the Ministry is launching fact sheets in health care delivery with data that can be verified.

He said that the sheet has been made in booklet form to afford those who are not around the state to know the activities of the state government in the health sector.

“In this programme, we are launching our fact sheets in the health care delivery system. Everywhere in the whole world, what is important is data. We should be able to have evidence in whatever we are doing. In the sheet, we were also able to assemble all the activities that the Oyo State government has done in the health sector in 2020. We made it in booklet form in such a way that even those who are not around the state will always have a feel of what we are doing when they go through it.”

Governor Makinde, according to the Director, commissioned a Radio Diagnostic Unit at Ring Road State Hospital and other state-of-the-art facilities such as CT scans, mammograms, x-ray machines, a modern theatre, laboratories, and other infrastructure in some hospitals in the state within his first 100 days in office.

He equally hinted that the government has been renovating one health facility per ward in all 33 local government areas of Oyo State, adding that the state government has just recruited more than 500 health workers into our secondary health care facilities.

He insisted that all of the current administration’s successes in the health sector had been compiled into a compendium that anyone may pick up and see what we are doing in Oyo State. The sheet’s information is also available in several electronic formats.

Similarly, UNICEF’s representative, Dr. Ijeoma Ago, stated that UNICEF has been collaborating with Oyo State to cut infant fatalities by 80% in the next two to three years, adding that no mother wants to give birth to a child who would die.

According to her, “UNICEF generates a lot of data from their facilities but we find out that it is not being used in planning and monitoring the programmes we are implementing within the state.

“Also, with the dwindling resources in the health sector, this is such an avenue to start using our resources more efficiently, especially directing them at the gaps we have identified through data.

UNICEF would continue to assist Oyo State in implementing the Reproductive Maternal Newborn and Child Health Services Scorecard in the state, she said.

“We are hoping that with this, we will improve the way we use our resources in planning and monitoring our services to ensure that we are meeting up with the target we have set for mothers and children in Oyo State.