NSCC AND NPHDA HEAD FOR MOU TO BOOST HEALTH CARE DELIVERY FOR SENIOR CITIZENS IN NIGERIA
Oru Leonard
The National Senior citizens Centre (NSCC) and the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHDA) are making moves towards sealing a memorandum of understanding for a robust and inclusive healthcare delivery model for senior citizens in Nigeria across the tiers of government.
This came to the fore at the end of a technical meeting between the two agencies in Abuja.
At the lead of the National Senior Citizens Centre is the Director General, Dr Emem Omokaro while the Executive Director, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, represented by the Director, Community Health Services, Dr. Usman Adamu was at the lead of the team from the NPHDA.
Key to Dr. Omokaro demands on the National Primary Health Care Development Agency are; NPHDA to capture geriatric assessment and care for older people, support training of Primary Health Care Workers on care for older people, provide sensitization on health lifestyle and nutrition for senior citizens and a technical working group on older people to be established for improved collaboration.
NSCC Director General appealed for increased attention for older persons in the communities by the NPHDA as much as it is not distracted from its mandate of attending to reproductive maternal newborn and child health concerns.
Dr. Omokaro said the National Primary Health Care Development Agency is central to the core mandate of the National Senior Citizens Centre which is bringing Health Care to the door steps of the people, including the senior citizens in all communities not minding where they reside mostly as a greater percentage of older people live in rural communities and hard to reach locations.
Assuredly, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency says care for Senior Citizens is key to reducing morbidity rate in the country and in the front burner to be explored for the older people include control of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, testing for cancer, Alzheimer diseases and other complications.
The NPHDA through the Department of Community Health Services commits to collaborate with the National Senior Citizens Centre to fashion out concrete strategies for reaching older people with basic health care services.
It will be recalled that the health and wellbeing of senior citizens have not really been in the forefront of health and social welfare intervention programmes before now.
Kudos to the Federal Government under the current dispensation for reversing the trend by creating the National Senior Citizens Centre to bridge the gap.
(NSCC Media)
