By Emmanuel Elebeke, Abuja

Stakeholders in the health and nutrition ecosystem recently met at a one-day workshop to review the Integrated Supportive Supervisory, ISS Tool Guide to support supervision activities on nutrition services in the country.

The review was to guide subsequent supportive supervision activities on nutrition and as part of the next step of the nutrition exercise.

The FMHoHSW in collaboration with Nutrition International had developed a guide to support the ISS digital tool for effective training of supervisors.

Speaking on the workshop, a social nutritionist with the African International Collaborative Center, Rekia Idris described the workshop as a good development, having an integrated supportive supervision training manual.

She said there had been for a long time for the Ministry staff and other agencies, going for monitoring and supervision services at the state level, LGA level, and even at the community levels but there has not been a coordinated effort, just everybody to go and do his own thing in silos.

‘‘I think this has been a good development, having an integrated supportive supervision training manual. Before you go out for supervision, you have been trained on what you go to look at the state level, and that will make sure that people go for supervision. when they come back, they have a document that everyone can relate to.

‘‘Everyone can report it, then they have a reporting mechanism, a benchmark for reporting, which is like this training manner. And this training manual, I so love it because it’s down to earth and it’s easy for the facilitators who are going to train all that to really use it and train the participant.

‘‘It’s very easy to use and it’s quite easy to understand, exactly what is required for you to do. You know, when you have effective and supervision, monetary knowledge, that means it will give you quality of services. And quality of services means improvement in disease for the nation’s policy’’.

Also speaking on the ISS review, one of the resource persons at the workshop, Mrs. Thompson Kecy expressed satisfaction at the level of commitment and investment shown by participants at the event.

While calling for the provision of adequate funding for nutrition services at all levels, Tompson expressed optimism that the ISS review will improve quality and effective policy delivery by using nutrition-sensitive interventions, of which 75 percent are installed by health sector, and other MDAs provide 25th of sensitive nutrition intervention.

She said, ‘‘I can see the commitments and investments of all participants into developing manual for supportive supervision of nutrition services in the country that the health sector increase. And those nutrition services that we’ve been talking for all these years are maternal, infant, and young child nutrition service; integrated acute malnutrition service, micronutrient deficiency services, nutrition, and emergency services.

‘‘And now, the latest we have been is the stock-out in commodities and resources. You know there are resources to do any work, without them, you can’t achieve. Now, we are really including one of the nutrition commodity logistic management information systems, because you need these resources to be able to deliver service and have quality healthcare in the country. And the health care we are doing is at the three levels of care.’’

On the potential challenges, she said if resources are not available at all levels, it might pose serious danger to the survival of the nutrition project.

‘’The overall aim is to improve quality and effective policy delivery from using nutrition-sensitive intervention, which 75 percent are installed by the health sector, other MDAs provide 25th sensitive nutrition intervention,’’ she added.

The representative of Helen Kela International and tits Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Manager, Mrs. Stanley Nwosu said, ‘This review exercise is the right direction that we are heading towards. We have been doing a lot of supportive supervision. But again, this is coming in a different fashion because it has to cover a lot of nutrition activities within the health facility.

‘’There is a training manual to guide that manual which is something that is good and commendable as it will help enhance nutrition activities within the health facilities.’’

While speaking on the composition of the reviewers, Nwosu said he had expected the participation to be more inclusive but expressed hope that it would yield the desired result.

‘‘I think we lack full participation of key stakeholders because we do not have all partners as expected. We needed UNICEF, there are other partners that should be here that are not currently here. I guess they would have attended the initial phase, the standard review, if we have them on the ground, we would have a general consensus.’’