Strengthening the Foundation for TSTS: A Snapshot of Progress in Kaduna & Kano

Nigeria’s health system faces a critical shortage of skilled health workers, particularly at the primary health care (PHC) level.

To address these shortages and improve service delivery, Nigeria adopted the Task Shifting and Task Sharing (TSTS) policy in 2014, with revisions in 2018 and 2022. The policy expands the roles of lower-cadre health workers, including Community Health Extension Workers (CHEWs), Junior Community Health Extension Workers (JCHEWs) and Community Health Officers (CHOs) by expanding their roles in the provision of essential healthcare services. Building on the national direction. Aligned with the National Frameworks, Kaduna and Kano states have domesticated the TSTS policy prioritizing the delivery of key health interventions, including Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child Adolescent and Elderly Health (RMNCHAE+N), Tuberculosis (TB), Malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other communicable and non-communicable diseases.

The TSTS investment (Investment INV-074254) seeks to generate evidence to support the full implementation and scale-up of the TSTS policy in Nigeria. By piloting the TSTS approach in Kano and Kaduna States, the investment aims to demonstrate the feasibility, effectiveness, and impact of task shifting and task sharing in improving service delivery outcomes at the Primary Health Care (PHC) level.

For more information on the implementation phase, during which the project equipped clinical providers and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) officers with the clinical, supervisory, and data-use skills required to implement the TSTS framework safely and effectively, read: Operationalizing TSTS at the Frontline: Strengthening Clinical and Data Capacity in Kaduna and Kano.