Mrs. Nnenna Akajemeli, National Coordinator, Service Compact with All Nigerians (SERVICOM), says the Agency is working in partnership with the Ministry of Health to enhance healthcare service delivery in the country.
Akajemeli told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja that the partnership focused at the improvement of healthcare services to the people in health facilities in the country.
She said the initiative was to fulfill the aim of establishing the Agency to ensure quality service delivery in all sectors.
Akajemeli disclosed that an evaluation assessment conducted by the Agency has shown that 14 Federal Medical Centres (FMC) in the country were in the state of disrepair and needed governments` attention.
She listed that affected medical centres to include Asaba; Makurdi, Owerri, Owo, Ebute-Metta, Yenagoa, Nguru, Ado-Ekiti, Gusau, Gombe, Abeokuta, Umuahia, Azare, Birnin Kebbi.
According to her, the evaluation assessment exercise have identified that most of the hospitals need refurbishment and provision of new medical equipment.
The Coordinator identified other areas as inadequate toilet facilities, inadequate beds, broken windows, inadequate ceiling fans and unkempt surroundings.
She explained that SERVICOM was set up to ensure quality service delivery to Nigerians by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), noting that Ministry of Health was one of them.
Akajemeli said that: “To know how well Ministry of Health is serving Nigerians, we visited all the hospitals and tertiary health institutions.
“We visited all of them and then we deploy Federal Executive Council approved instrument for measuring quality of services delivered to Nigerians, and that is the SERVICOM index.
“Going by overall objectives of SERVICOM Compliance Evaluation (SCE), the reason behind this is to ensure citizen focused services delivery and in the case of hospitals, Patient-Centred-Service Delivery.
“The specific objectives of SCE exercise is to identify service delivery failure gaps in order to draw government`s attention for its intervention”.
According to her, the overall consideration in SCE exercise is to ensure that citizens are satisfied with the quality of services rendered in hospitals.
She urged management of the hospitals and the government to prioritise implementing core policies to deal with issues hampering excellent service delivery to the people.
The Coordinator reiterated the commitment of SERVICOM to work in close collaboration with Ministry of Health to fix the identified gaps in fulfillment of its mandate. (NAN)