FG recruits 10,000 health workers to tackle polio **************************** ********************************* The Federal Government has recruited and deployed over 10,000 Primary Health Care workers nationwide in its efforts to fight polio and other child-killer diseases. Executive Director of National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Ado Muhammad, in a statement on Wednesday announced the figure while signing a Memorandum of Understanding on reproductive health component of life- saving commodities of the United Nations Population Fund. Muhammad said the health workers were “made up of midwives, nurses, community health workers and village health workers.” He said over 2,000 health facilities spread across 459 Local Government Areas nationwide would benefit from the health human resource intervention. The NPHCDA boss disclosed that a new strategy, known as conditional cash transfer built into the SURE-P Maternal and Child Health, which was designed to increase demand for PHC services, had been yielding impressive results. He stated that that the CCT had tripled demands for PHC services in over 2,500 PHC facilities where the Midwives Service Scheme and SURE-P MCH are being implemented. He assured the UNFPA that its support on life-saving commodities to improve Nigerian health would be distributed to all health facilities involved in the MSS and the SURE-P MCH interventions. The UNFPA team leader, Victoria Akyeampong, recalled President Goodluck Jonathan’s pledge to the international community to support the MSS and SURE-P on maternal and child health interventions with $8.5m out of the funds available from the partial fuel subsidy withdrawals. The UNFPA, she announced, would therefore support the Federal Government with $2.5m from 2013 to 2017 on maternal and child health interventions.