Community Partners for Health: Urban Health Coalitions in Lagos,Nigeria

Abstract

Basic Support for Institutionalizing Child Survival (BASICS) was given a mandate by USAID to find innovative ways to meet the child health needs of poor Nigerian urban communities. BASICS inventoried communities in the Lagos metropolitan area to identify community-based organizations (CBOs) and private health facilities (HFs) that could form coalitions that might plan and deliver child and family health services such as immunization and prompt treatment. Six Community Partners for Health (CPHs) coalitions formed in late 1995. In late 1997, a documentation of the progress and processes of CPH formation and functioning was carried out through a review of documents, interviews with CPH leaders, discussions with CBO members, and textual analysis of CPH board meeting minutes to define the CPH approach, the organizational structures that result from that approach, the achievements of the CPHs and the potential sustainability of the approach. All CPHs have developed a work plan and all have undertaken programmatic activities including child immunization campaigns, environmental clean-up, and awareness campaigns to alert the public on the dangers of HIV/AIDS. Most CPHs have also developed three main mechanisms for financial sustainability. Finally, CPHs have also been calling on each other for technical and management assistance. This augers well for future independent action and sustainability, and BASICS staff themselves have been promoting inter-CPH communication and activities among the Lagos CPHs.