Private Sector Health Alliance of Nigeria (PHN) has executed the largest mobile health (mHealth) intervention in Nigeria having mobilised at least nine million targeted underserved women and children in eight high disease-burdened states to utilise free primary healthcare services through innovation and partnerships.
PHN is a private sector led coalition which mobilises the business and corporate community towards multi-sectoral partnerships to improve health outcomes.
The intervention is being implemented as part of the Maternal Newborn and Child Health Weeks (MNCHW) campaign, a biannual national mass campaign that seeks to mobilise women and children across the country to access free primary health care services and life-saving commodities such as vitamin A supplements, routine immunisations, de- worming tablets, screen- ing for malnutrition, long- lasting insecticide-treated bed nets for malaria, ORS and zinc for diarrhoea and others. Partners that joined the Alliance for the intervention include Etisalat, Dangote Group, Access Bank, Zenith Bank, Stanbic IBTC, SOML, VAS2NETS, GSMA, Visafone, UNICEF, Samsung and GSK, among others.
Jim Ovia, co-chair of the Private Sector Health Alliance, said: “As we approach the December 2015 MDGs deadline, we are pleased that PHN is providing the platform to bring together private sector partnerships and innovation that will en- able Nigeria accelerate progress in attaining the health MDGs.”
Also speaking, Muntaqa Umar-Sadiq, managing director and chief executive officer, PHN, said, “Following a rapid diagnostic, we identified priority areas of the health system where integrating private sector capabilities to public health priorities will unlock constraints and contribute significantly to the saving one million lives movement.”
According to him, in addition to mobilising private sector resources to provide nutrition and life-saving commodities to 500,000 children across under- served jurisdictions, PHN also provided private sector management support to public primary health- care centres in a number of high burden states to enhance the productivity of public health workers and improve the quality of care provided during the MNCHWs.
He explained that PHN has scaled up its previous health intervention to target nine million vulnerable women, using geo-location based mobile text messages and voice messages in local languages.
Aliko Dangote, found- ing patron of the PHN, said: “As we commence the race to save one million lives by the end of 2015, we call on more private sector leaders, foundations, companies, volunteers and other non-state actors to join the ‘coalition of the willing’ committed to saving at least one mil- lion lives of women and children in Nigeria by 2015 and beyond through innovation and partnerships.”
