Since 2022, over 600,000 women and children under five in Kano State have accessed essential healthcare services through the IntegratE Project, including family planning, treatment for malaria, pneumonia and other childhood illnesses, with almost 100,000 first-time users, while an estimated 20,000 unintended pregnancies were averted with Kano's modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) increased from 5.8% to 10.8%.
The project also trained 988 community pharmacists and Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors (PPMVs) across the state, strengthening the capacity of community-based providers to offer family planning services and contribute to primary healthcare delivery, with 232,219 women accessing FP services and 372,000 Children Under 5 being seen for various PHC services by trained CPs and PPMVs.
These gains were highlighted at the IntegratE Project dissemination and close-out event in Kano State, where stakeholders reflected on the project's contribution to expanding access to family planning and primary healthcare services through the private sector. The intervention recognised that for many families, particularly those in underserved communities, community pharmacists and PPMVs are among the first and most accessible points of contact with the healthcare system. Through training and support, providers were equipped to offer family planning information, counselling and commodities, identify and appropriately manage or refer common childhood illnesses, and support tuberculosis screening and referral.
Speaking at the event, Kano State Commissioner for Health, Dr Abubakar Labaran Yusuf, highlighted the broader contribution of the intervention to the State's family planning agenda. He noted that Kano's modern contraceptive prevalence rate (mCPR) increased from 5.8% to 10.8%, and acknowledged the important role SFH's IntegratE Project played in this progress. He further emphasised the importance of ensuring that the trained community pharmacists and PPMVs remain integrated into the healthcare system and continue to serve communities beyond the project period.
For the Gates Foundation, the Kano experience demonstrates the value of investing in community-level private providers as part of a broader health system. Representing the Foundation, Dr Shamsudeen Sani noted that the project had helped women access family planning services in Kano, contributing to preventing about 20,000 unintended pregnancies. He also highlighted the project's contribution to expanding access to primary healthcare services for children under five.
For Society for Family Health (SFH), the achievements in Kano build on nearly three decades of partnership with the State. Speaking at the event, Dayyabu Mahmud Yusuf, Group Director, SFH, reflected on SFH longstanding work across HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, maternal and child health, family planning and health-system strengthening. Through IntegratE, SFH and its partners worked with regulatory institutions, including the Pharmacy Council of Nigeria, to strengthen the training, accreditation, supervision and integration of community pharmacists and PPMVs into the wider health system. The project has also generated evidence on how private-sector community providers can help expand access to essential health services when they are appropriately trained, regulated, supervised and connected to functional referral pathways.
The close-out of IntegratE is therefore not simply an end point; it is a transition to sustainability. Kano now has trained community-level providers, strengthened partnerships and valuable evidence to build upon. The next step is to sustain these gains through government ownership, continued regulation and supervision, quality assurance, commodity security, functional referral systems and the deliberate integration of family planning and community-based services into the broader primary healthcare agenda.
For SFH, the commitment remains clear: to work with government, regulators, communities, private providers and development partners to strengthen systems, scale what works and ensure that the gains made through IntegratE continue to bring quality healthcare closer to the people of Kano.
