The Cross River State Government has vowed to punish officials in charge of Primary Healthcare facilities in the state that ask pregnant women to pay N10,000 for delivery.
The threat was issued on Wednesday by the Director General of the Cross River Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Janet Ekpenyong, at the integrated meeting with PHC Ward Focal Persons and the state Basic Healthcare Provision Scheme in Calabar.
According to her, there have been complaints that some PHCs in the state charge pregnant women and other patients as much as N10,000.
“The PHCs are supposed to charge just N3,000 to pregnant women who come for delivery to purchase consumables and this is only when they don’t come with their own consumables as stated on the list initially given to them
“We are looking at ways to encourage pregnant women to patronise health facilities instead of traditional birth attendants.
“While we totally condemn these actions, we have set up a team headed by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health to ensure that culpable PHCs and personnel are adequately penalised,” she said.
According to Ekpenyong, out of the 196 PHC facilities in the state, over 130 had been accredited for the Cross River Basic Healthcare Insurance Scheme.
The Director-General, Cross River Basic Healthcare Provision Scheme, Mr. Godwin Iyala, emphasised the importance of the scheme to the universal healthcare provision, adding that the PHCs were selected to achieve universal health coverage because of their closeness to the people.
He said 50 laptops would be distributed to the PHCs selected for the Basic Healthcare Provision Scheme, adding that “the computers which have been configured are for effective record keeping and transfer of information for the scheme in the PHCs.
“Every month the PHCs will be paid capitation based on the number of enrollees they have, after proper monitoring and evaluation by our third party administrators that will go round the facilities from time to time.”
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Health, Dr. David Ushie, said if there is a functional PHC in a ward and pregnant women in that ward still visit traditional birth attendants for delivery, that PHC is useless to the people.
