The Society for Family Health (SFH) says its Gates Foundation-funded IntegratE 2.0 Project helped prevent an estimated 15,000 malaria deaths among under-five children while expanding access to healthcare services across 11 states.
Emeka Okafor, Group Director, SFH Donor Funded Portfolio, disclosed this on Wednesday, September 23, in Lagos at the project’s close-out dissemination event. He said the intervention provided malaria services to more than 1.2 million children under five, while 340,142 children with diarrhoea received treatment with ORS and zinc and 137,703 children with pneumonia were treated with Amoxicillin DT.
Okafor said about 1.7 million women accessed family planning services through trained community pharmacists and Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors (PPMVs), with nearly 400,000 accessing such services for the first time. He said the project also identified 10,898 presumptive tuberculosis cases, of which 1,320 were confirmed and placed on treatment, while 7,681 children received micronutrient powder.
The project, implemented from October 2021 to September 2026, also trained and equipped more than 900 community-based providers in Lagos to deliver specialised family planning services, including contraceptive implants and injectables. Stakeholders said the intervention expanded access to services for more than 400,000 Lagos residents and demonstrated the potential of trained community providers to support primary healthcare delivery.
SFH and government officials called for the gains to be sustained through stronger integration of community pharmacists and PPMVs into formal referral and health information systems. They also advocated the inclusion of community-provider data in the National Health Management Information System and DHIS-II to improve healthcare planning and policy decisions.
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