The Benue State Government said it has employed 105 midwives deployed to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps and Primary Health Centres (PHCs).

This was disclosed by the executive secretary of Benue State Primary Health Care Board Mrs Grace Wende in an exclusive interview with The Guardian in Makurdi over the weekend.

Wende told The Guardian that the need for midwives and maternal caregivers became urgent because of the rate of childbirths at the IDP camps.

According to the Benue PHC boss, one of the camps, the Ortese IDP camp in the Guma local government council alone recorded 200 births in one month.

She said that because of the urgency of the situation, the government of Hyacinth Alia immediately employed experienced midwives and nurses in the first phase and posted them to the camps to attend to pregnant IDPs as well as to some of the PHCs and is set to employ more.

Wende admitted that there were fatalities in the past due to gross neglect of the PHCs but however pointed out that the government was working round the clock to address the challenges and make health care available and affordable to even the least of the poor.

Wende, a health management expert with over 30 years of experience before her new appointment at the PHC, was the Executive Secretary of Benue State Agency for the Control of AIDS (BENSACA) and a recipient of the Federal government’s productivity merit award for best performing and productive state AIDS control agency.

When The Guardian pointed out the poor state of the PHC’s and inquired about the counterpart funds received by the government, she said that although the Benue state government paid a counterpart funding of 1.2 billion naira in 2016 and received 2.4 billion naira in 2021 for primary health care in the state.

She explained that it was two years before the assumption of the current government but assured that the Alia administration in collaboration with the federal government and international donor agencies was in the process of repositioning the state’s Primary Health Care centers to achieve their target objectives of maternal health and child mortality.

Wende said that there are 900 Primary Health Centres in Benue state although 276 representing at least one in each ward for special attention in line with the federal government’s directive.

She assured that plans are underway for every health care centre irrespective of designation to receive adequate attention in the interest of the populace and urged for understanding as she said, “the administration was still only one year in office and can’t do everything in one day”.