Dr. Noor Abraham Ansari, resource person at the on-going Social Audit Workshop holding at the College of Health Technology, Calabar, said the third cycle of the Social Audit is a consolidation on the previous two conducted in 2009/2010 and 2011, for confirmation and updating.
Noor said the previous exercise studied 15, 000 households in which 11,000 pregnant women were interviewed across the three senatorial districts adding that it was important for Government to know what is happening in those two areas of the State to ascertain see if the situation has improved or declined; maintaing that Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) four and five are focused on Mother and Child Health while MDGs seven and eight border on malaria, and will be briefly looked into.
Reeling out the objectives of the third Social Audit Cycle, he said the Audit intends to build a consolidated module to assess the health needs of the target group for Primary Health Centre (PHC), that is, women of child bearing age, 14-49 years and children below five years respectively, to measure the coverage and use of PHC services in the State Local Government Areas, with a view to providing a data base to assess progress on key MDGs indicators and identify pointers to foster action.
Other objectives according to him are, to make then evidence available at the State and Local Government Levels, to continue building human capital to sustain Social Audit within the mainstream system and provide evidence to measure the impact of Nigerian Evidence-Based Health (NEHSI).
Dr. Noor said the system adopted by Community Information Empowerment Transparency (CIET) is multi-stakeholders systems where the Government, the Agency and the Communities involved offer their opinion in relation to the solution of the problem as exposed by the findings.
Projecting the number of households to be studied, Ansari said 120 households will be covered in the Audit adding that among the 50 Participants receiving training, 39 will be on active participation in the exercise, while the others will be on stand-by in case of emergency.
On Community Profile, he said the tool to be employed in the Audit is called Demographic Household Questionnaire (DHQ) adding that, Participants will be divided into groups of 13 or 14 members each as the case may be, comprising of two or three men out of which one member will preferably a female, will be the Quality Control Associate (QCA).
Ansari maintained that every member of the group will have a role to play and that roles must be respected because they will not be assigned according to official hierarchy but by participation adding that at the end of the training, every member will give account of his or her role, warning that any member that does not participate actively with in a group will be dropped.
Speaking further, Noor said the Ethical Framework built around the Multi- Stakeholders System which CIET operates is hinged on modesty and politeness, informed consent, respect, professionalism and ability to manage time adding that the Technology employed in the Audit is monitored with the use of satellite which will report the location of each participant and time, thus, there is no room for pranks and implored participants to brace up for the task.