The Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism, PTCIJ, has launched a Primary Health Care tracker as part of its strategic vision of employing civic technology solution to address health care provision in Nigeria.
The tracker, named PHC Tracker,seeks to bring service delivery in the health sector within the purview of the people in a way to give substance to accountability of citizens over government policies in the sector. The PHC Tracker will enable citizens and journalists track and report on healthcare service delivery and project implementation in the country.
The Chief Executive of the Centre, Dapo Olorunyomi, said, “This way, capital projects will be better tracked to promote citizen participation as veritable mechanisms, not only for the monitoring of service delivery, but also for improving access to healthcare service across the country.”
He added that “the application promises to revolutionize healthcare delivery in the country by empowering citizens and delivering content to them in a responsive and mobile friendly environment.”
The tracker is the innovative outcome of a collaboration between the PTCIJ and Code for Nigeria with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, BMGF.
This technological innovation is in line with PTCIJ`s strategic mission to use civic technology to help solve critical social and development issues in Nigeria.
Commenting on the PHC Tracker, Joshua Olufemi, the programme director of the centre, encouraged “citizens to fully interact with the appas this will allow them to express their candid views on the state of the health care and of public health institutions across the country.”
Speaking further, he advised health personnel to also “use the app to make reports without any fear of victimisation or punishment because reports will remain anonymous except otherwise permitted by the citizen.”
The tracker is embedded with a geo-location tracking system which points to the exact location of a health facility which makes it possible for independent verification visit without recourse to the person who made the report. As a cardinal objective of the tracker, contracts awarded by government will be fully monitored by citizens for better service delivery.
Mr. Olufemi encouraged stakeholders in the health sector to seek collaboration with the PTCIJ as a way of making the tracker realise its greatest potentials that can greatly benefit all sectors and players in the health sector.
The tracker can be accessed onwww.phc.ptcij.org and can work with any type of smartphone.
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