THE Society for Family Health (SFH) and Delivery Innovation in Self-Care (DISC), have trained various providers from the six (6) Northern Senatorial District Local Government Area of Plateau State, on DISC empathy counseling skills towards supporting clients on their SI journey.
This, they did in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health, Plateau State Ministry of Health and the State Primary Health Care Board with Implementing Partners to increase participants’ capacity on proper recording of Family Planning Services using the NHMIS and NLMIS tools to help address challenges with data quality in FP reporting at facilities, LGA and State level reporting.
Speaking shortly after the training, Lola Raji, of Society For Family Health and DISC Project, said, “what we are doing is to have a core creation workshop. The core creation workshop happened on Monday where we sat with all the State Actors to look at the implementation of DISC Project in the State and be able to discuss and identify sustainable plans.
“When I said sustainable plans, we are looking at the interventions that DISC is doing rescue it and be able to care forward. So, we actually identified the cost effective of the intervention that the State Government through the Ministry of Health and the Primary Healthcare Agency can be able to do at little or no cost that is at very cost effective rate.
“So, we are doing what we called the Data Strengthening Capacity Building Support for the state where we have all the 17 LG M&E Officers and SP Supervisors. We are using this opportune to provide them with what we called Empathy Based Counseling Training to able give providers the knowledge, skills and confidence for them to be able support women to soft inject”, she highlighted.
Raji, further explained that they were also look at HMRS Register for M&E and SP Coordinators to understand the indicators and be able to report properly saying, “as it is, we are trying to bridge the gap between the programmatic based data and we are picking from the HMRS.
“We went into the facility and saw that the facility is doing so much, but all the records and art works are not showing in the National Data Based which is HMRS. What we are doing is use this opportunity to look into register and the monthly summary form, identify the teething challenges so that, we will be able to bridge that gap”, she explained
The SFH/DISC Deputy Team Leader, assured participants from the six Local Government Areas that they would showcase to good work that Plateau State was doing and provide a data for better decision making at all levels- be it at local government, state and at the national levels respectively.
However, the Family Planning (FP) Coordinator of the Plateau State Primary Health Care Board, Mrs Asabe Mwansat, commended the training done to them on data capacity strengthening and that, it has helped them to understand the importance of data keeping because it would enable their sponsors to know what they doing and also helped reduce the maternal morbidity rate.
She assured participants at the training that, they would showcase the good work that Plateau State was doing and provide a data for better decision making at all levels- be it at local government, state and at the national levels in that order.
In his presentations on the Empathy Based Counselling the Business Manager, Research and Data Analyst of the DISC Project Mr Fidelis Edet highlighted that when providers are adequately equipped with the necessary skills to address the concerns of clients raised during counselling sessions in facilities, these providers wouyl in turn be able to address these fears and concerns and reassured the clients while training them on self-inject.
He said, some of the common fears and concerns expressed by clients were fear of needles, fear of pain, fear of not doing it incorrectly etc which however, could be addressed using the Empathy Based Counselling.
The data submit which took place in 2 clusters also had in attendance the State Reproductive Health Coordinator Mr Rahila Telfim, State Health Information Management services officer, Mrs Nimzing Nanchal Selbol, The State Logistician, Mr Goselle, 17 LGA RHCs and MEO as well as other partners in the state working in the self-care space Marie Stopes International and HANDS.
