The Nigerian Solidarity Support Fund and the State Primary Health Care Development Agency have both expressed a desire to collaborate in order to increase support for the COVID-19 vaccination SCALES 3.0 initiative nationwide.
This was disclosed on Monday, in a communiqué issued by NSSF at the end of its meeting with representatives of SPHCDA’s forum of Chief Executive Officers in Lagos.
The forum was held in an effort to close the gaps discovered during the implementation of SCALES 2.0, which NSSF was a part of, and in response to NPHCDA’s launch of the SCALES 3.0 strategy this month.
It partly read, “SCALES is an acronym for ‘Service delivery, Communication, Accountability, Logistics, Electronic reporting, and Supportive supervision’ for the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination. Through the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, SCALES were introduced to rapidly ramp up COVID-19 vaccine coverage and reinvigorate routine immunisation uptake by expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines outside the health facility.
“The Executive Secretary, Nasarawa SPHCDA, Dr Mohammed Adis, expressed gratitude to NSSF for its previous and ongoing support towards the implementation of the COVID-19 vaccination programme in six states, including Adamawa, Edo, Imo, Katsina, Ogun, and Nasarawa states. He also said that with the aid of the funds received from NSSF, Nasarawa state moved from 32nd place at the last evaluation before December 2021 to first place in the country by June 2022.”
“Both partners agreed that with the benefit of key lessons from the implementation of SCALES 2.0, some gaps were identified during its implementation. Some logistics issues, but not limited to (i.e. transportation, data entry in the Electronic Management of Immunisation Data platform, and security) were identified during the implementation of SCALES 2.0, and these need to be addressed with new strategies that have been put in place for 3.0.
“The new phase also intends to address last-line visibility and would ensure that gaps at all levels, down to the primary healthcare centres, can be identified at the national level and attended to immediately. Additionally, the database used for COVID vaccinations has been improved to capture performance; the performance of the teams involved, against their targets, to promote accountability.
