Gombe SRHR project records 16,245 community referrals

The Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and Communicable Diseases project implemented in three local government areas of Gombe State recorded 16,245 referrals from communities to health facilities between February and October 2026.

 The Executive Director of Kishimi Shelter and Care Foundation, Mrs Grace Samuel, made this disclosure on Tuesday, during the project’s close-out meeting in Gombe.

 Samuel clarified that the figure represented referrals generated from communities to health facilities and not the total number of people who received services under the intervention.

 She explained that the project focused on generating demand for healthcare services at the community level and linking people to facilities where they could access the required care.

 “The 16,245 represents the referrals made from the community to the facility, which is our mandate. We generate demand and then refer people to the facility,” she said.

 She added that the number of people who eventually received services depended on attendance at the health facilities.

 Arewa PUNCH reports that the project, funded by the Global Fund through the National AIDS and STIs Control Programme and implemented by the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynaecology and Obstetrics (Jhpiego), in partnership with Kishimi Shelter and Care Foundation, covered 15 health facilities in Akko, Gombe and Kaltungo local government areas.

 Speaking at the meeting, the Jhpiego Gombe State Team Lead, Ibrahim Nenge, described the intervention as a pilot initiative designed to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of integrating primary healthcare services while strengthening community participation.

 Nenge said the project demonstrated the potential of community involvement to improve healthcare-seeking behaviour and health outcomes.

 “I am so excited to be part of this close-out meeting because we started all the work together early this year. This is a pilot to see whether integrated services are possible and how effective they can be when we work closely with communities,” he said.

 He explained that healthcare services had often been delivered separately, leaving patients to navigate fragmented systems, but the project sought to promote a more integrated approach at the primary healthcare level.

 “Prior to this time, most healthcare services had been delivered in silos, in a fragmented form of primary care. But with this particular project, every service delivery point provides a woman with the holistic primary healthcare she needs,” Nenge said.

 According to him, the pilot has generated evidence that integrated healthcare services can be delivered at primary healthcare facilities, potentially paving the way for expansion.

 However, he stressed that the sustainability of the initiative would depend on continued community participation beyond the project’s closure.

 “The success of the programme is in sustainability. If we come back in six months or one year and discover that the community network management activities are no longer being carried out, that means the project has not succeeded,” he said.

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 Nenge urged community members and relevant stakeholders to sustain the activities established under the intervention, adding that continued collaboration between communities and primary healthcare facilities would encourage more women to seek care.

 Also speaking, the Executive Director of Dandalin Matasa Initiative for Rapid Development and Chairman of the Association of Non-Governmental Organisations in Gombe State, Bachama Yusuf, rated the project a success, citing the mechanisms put in place to review implementation and address emerging challenges.

 “For me, this is a huge success. It is a huge, huge, huge success,” Yusuf said.

 He called on the implementing partners to consider expanding the intervention beyond the three participating local government areas to cover more communities and health facilities across the state.

 “Considering the success of this project and the fact that it covered only three local government areas in the state, it is important that the partners consider scaling it up to reach more LGAs and more facilities,” he said.

 Yusuf also urged the Gombe State Government to increase its investment in sexual and reproductive health services, describing the sector as a strategic component of public health and human development.

 He said communities must take ownership of the initiative to ensure that the gains recorded during implementation were not lost following the close-out of the project.

 “It is not Jhpiego’s project, and it is not Kishimi’s project. It is our project as a people. It is our responsibility to own the process so that we can sustain the initiative,” he said.

 Yusuf warned that the closure of the intervention should not lead to a decline in referrals or the availability of essential health commodities at participating facilities.

 He recalled concerns raised during implementation about commodities being mobilised for facilities only for beneficiaries to encounter stock-outs when they arrived to receive services.

 “We want to see continuation and even expansion. We wouldn’t want to see all these records and figures begin to drop simply because there is a close-out,” he said.

 He called for stronger government funding to ensure that essential commodities remained available, alongside sustained oversight by civil society organisations to promote accountability in the use of public health resources.

 Yusuf also urged health facilities to ensure that resources provided for service delivery were used judiciously for the benefit of patients.

 “For us, this is a continuous responsibility. This is not the end of a project. It is actually the beginning of a new phase on how we move on with what we have learnt and what we have engaged,” he said.

 Our correspondent reports that stakeholders signed to sustain the successes of the intervention in the pilot LGAs.