The Journey To Sustainability Of Emergency Transport Scheme In Adamawa

Society for Family Health (SFH) and Transaid in collaboration with National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) commenced Emergency Transport Scheme (ETS) Project implementation in Adamawa State in 2013. The project is aimed at saving the lives of pregnant women and increasing their uptake of maternal health services through the use of ETS services provided by NURTW. About 17,000 women have benefited from the intervention since inception.

In a bid to ensure project sustainability after close out in June, 2018, the project management team comprising of SFH, Transaid, NURTW and Adamawa State Ministry of Women Affairs (SMoWA) advocated to the Executive Governor of Adamawa state, His Excellency Senator Mohammed Jibrilla Bindow to brief him and some of his cabinet members of project efforts in contributing to the state health system as well as solicited his support in working with NURTW, SMoWA and State Ministry of Health (SMoH) to sustain project activities after close out. He was excited with the contribution of the project, expressed gratitude to implementing partners and directed the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) to liaise with the First Lady of the State and the wives of the Deputy Governor for direct involvement and adoption as PET project. He also requested a draft budget of project activities be submitted to the government through the SSG to enable funds allocation to support project sustainability which is being fine-tuned with SMoWA.
The advocacy and a subsequent one led to the donation of a Toyota Sienna vehicle to NURTW to support monitoring of routine activities. To further motivate ETS volunteers, the State Government gave NURTW two seats each for pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Hajj in Mecca for 2018 batch and also announced the enrollment of twenty volunteer drivers to benefit from N10,000 monthly under his empowerment program.