By Kebba AF Touray
The National Audit Office (NAO) has reported that 80 percent of health facilities their audit team visited fall short of the required staff.
The Audit Office made this disclosure in its audit performance report during their follow-up audit on the delivery of Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC), by the Ministry of Health (MOH).
“We have also found that more than 80 percent of health facilities visited fall short of the required staff and equipment to ensure effective provision of EmOC as stated in the staff norm of MoH for both Basic Emergency Obstetric Care (BEmOC) and Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric Care (CEmOC),” the audit report said.
On the midwifery workforce management, the audit report indicated that the MOH in their response to the findings, said that it had posted RN Midwives in most of the minor health facilities to offer EmOC to patients, and they have also trained midwives who are posted in EmOC facilities.
The audit report also highlighted that the MoH is currently reviewing its HR policy and strategy which will guide the Ministry on its staffing norm in all health facilities.
“Furthermore, the number of intakes in Midwifery programs increased from 50 to 150 from 2020 to date,” the Audit report said.
The audit report further explained that during their visit to selected health facilities across the country and in their interview with staff at these health facilities, it was discovered that most of the Midwives were trained on EmOC from 2020 to 2022.
“The MoH should improve in the recruitment of additional Midwives to bridge the huge gaps in the midwifery workforce management in most of these health facilities,” the Audt Office said. However, it disclosed that the MoH has not made significant progress in reviewing its HR policy and strategy on how to redirect its staffing norm in all the health facilities, because they are currently reviewing the two documents.
On the monitoring of EmOC services, NAO reported that they have looked at the functionality of EmOC facilities as per responses provided by MoH on the Quality of Care Checklist used by the RHDs during their monitoring visits, adding that the monitoring data and results are shared by RHDs through the DHIS platform. The NAO audit report also confirmed that periodic studies are also done to assess the EmOC services.
It noted that the Reproductive, Maternal, Neonatal, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) Unit collates data and does independent monitoring to verify data provided by RHDs on a quarterly basis.
“In our assessment of this response, it was discovered that the Ministry of Health has adequately addressed and remedied all deficiencies identified in the report for the monitoring of EmoC by reviewing the checklist, to comprehensively look at EmOC in their quality checklist which was verified and confirmed by the audit team,” the NAO report confirmed.
