Orodata Science, a civic technology organization, is set to launch a tool designed to improve transparency and accountability in Nigeria’s primary healthcare system.
The organization announced this in a statement issued on Friday, in which it indicated that the platform will promote subnational participation in governance while strengthening health institutions.
According to the statement, for over a decade, the organization has been harnessing the power of data science, technology and research to champion fiscal transparency and accountability in Nigeria, driving positive change through informed advocacy.
MYPHCConsult
According to the statement, the platform, ‘CheckMYPHC’, aims to empower stakeholders, including government officials, journalists, citizens and healthcare professionals, with access to comprehensive data on the status of primary healthcare centres across the country.
Orodata said the platform allows users to explore primary health centre status by state and local government.
He said: “CheckMYPHC was developed under the African Data Hub (ADH) initiative and is part of a larger project called the My PHC Project, which has three facets: the frontline data collection programme, the frontline research programme and the digital platform called Check MyPHC.
“On the platform, users can explore the status of primary health centres by state and local governments in Nigeria, download data and request more. They can also search for specific primary health centres (PHCs) in their communities, compare them to those in another community and view key information about building structure, infrastructure, staff and more.”
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The organization said the platform has a crucial feature that allows users to submit feedback based on their experiences at a Primary Health Centre (PHC), adding that it enables community champions and organizations to record continuous and real-time information on the condition of PHCs in their areas, informing targeted interventions to restore abandoned and neglected healthcare facilities across Nigeria.
“With the recent affirmation by the Nigerian government to disburse over N12 billion to NPHCDA Gateway through the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF), non-state actors need to support stakeholders with essential basic health data required for effective service delivery through optimized resource allocation, expenditure tracking and strengthening the feedback loop between government and citizens,” the statement read in part.
He further stated that the inaugural version of the CheckMYPHC platform has a comprehensive dataset that includes primary health centres from six states, representing all six geopolitical zones in Nigeria.
Specifically, the platform includes data from Sokoto, Taraba, Benue, Cross River, Anambra and Osun, “providing valuable information on the current status of over 345 primary health centres in these difficult and hard-to-reach areas.”
He explained that the initial dataset covers the north-central, northeast, northwest, southwest, southeast and south-south regions, offering a comprehensive understanding of the healthcare landscape in these regions.
He said that building on this foundation, the upcoming second phase of data collection aims to substantially increase the platform's coverage, targeting over 1,000 primary health centres across 16 states, adding that the expansion is set to begin quickly after the launch, thereby significantly amplifying the platform's reach and effectiveness.