TSTS, Solution To Health Sector Dearth – Health Commissioner

In order to address the dearth of human resources in the health sector in Lagos State, the Commissioner of Health, Dr Jide Idris, has said that the Task Shifting and Task Sharing, (TSTS) policy was adopted to help reduce work load on health professionals.

Addressing journalists in Lagos, the Commissioner who was represented by the Director of Pharmaceutical Services, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr Moyosore Adejimoh, said that the policy is meant to address what we currently have in the country not in just in Lagos State.

“The dearth of human resources in health that is critical and necessary for quality health care has been identified long before now. To make the duties and responsibilities of core professionals efficient and effective. If they are shared and shifted where appropriate and where there is capacity, patients seeking health, whether it’s the public or private space would have access to health care.

“We are taking our cue from the Federal Ministry of Health which already has the policy in place. It is decentralization of the policy that has been adopted by the Lagos State Ministry of Health.

“Some of the advantages of TSTS policy is the appropriate sharing of duties to sub cadres of the main professional group. Patients will not be turned away and these professionals would be better enabled by virtue of the fact that they won’t be overwhelmed by too many patient who want to see them and complain of doctors, nurses and pharmacists been over worked would stop.

“Also, the fact that we do have health workers whom with extra training and capacity building can also provide those services. It is a positive development when and if properly implemented and we are looking towards ensuring that there is a robust monitoring and supervision as well as evaluation in the state,” he explained.

He said it is a living document that will continue to be reviewed, reapplied until we get to that stage when professionals don’t have to shift or share duties.

According to him,” the document is already in place and ones we have the necessary structures for monitoring and put in place Standard Operating Procedure, (SOP) which is the core aspect of any policy is been rolled out, the work implementation, work plan and action plan will commence.”

Also speaking, Save the Children, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Advisor, Dr Opeyemi Odedere, said the TSTS policy was planned as a result of the shortages in human resources and inadequate skill distribution within the health system and the quality of service delivery can sometimes be questioned.

Oludere said the policy is a stop gap measure as the population of Lagos State keep increasing, it has reduced the health worker to patient ratio resulting in the shortage of health workers across all cadre, hence the Lagos state government showed interest in the national TSTS policy and subsequently decided to adapt to Lagos peculiarities.

He added that “TSTS will provide the path necessary to support the achievement of significant progress in improving the performance of the health system by combating health workers shortages. It would also help the government to appropriate training to different cadres taking cognizance those tasks have been shifted to or shared with.Ultimately, the essence of this is to achieve the Universal Health Coverage and attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

Speaking further on the plan, the Lead Consultant for Save The Children Nigeria, Akaoma Onyemelukwe said, “what we did was to validate the Human Resources for Health, HRH, which is a five year implementation plan. This action plan talks about eight priority area one of which is communication and connectivity and also the work force plan which is the bane of the plan.”

Onyemelukwe said that the plan can only work if it is well resourced, the investment on HRH is increased in terms of budgetary and non-budgetary allocation as well as funding, hoping that the Lagos State government will demonstrate its leadership by implementing the TSTS plan and by 2025 the mission of this strategic plan must have been achieved.

Dr. Edun Omasanjuwa of Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI), said that the Task Shifting and Task Sharing is a policy which implies that, “if a superior officer is not available at a time of need, a junior or sub cadre staff can provide that services provided that they have been adequately trained, monitored and certified to provide that service under supervision.”