Kaduna State Bureau of Statistics organized a validation workshop on the KDGHS2020 result for all its stakeholders on Wednesday 2nd June, 2021.

The Honourable Commissioner of Health, Dr. Amina Mohammad Baloni was present at the event, representatives of MDAs like Ministry of Health and its parastatals, Ministry of Education as well as key partners like BMGF, UNICEF, Christian Aid, CRERD, Natview Foundation, Lafiya Program, CHIP etc were all in attendance.

The main objective of the KDGHS2020 survey was to provide data on socio-economic and health indicators for policy formulation and evidence based planning in Kaduna state while the objective of the validation was to bring in stakeholders to check the relevance, accuracy and acceptability of the result produced from the survey. The indicators and methodology of the survey was reeled out to the stakeholders for better understanding of the KDGHS2020 process and result/findings.

The stakeholders were broken into four groups to enable subject specialist validate specific issues that need specific interventions in their individual areas of specialty and interest. The groups and their subject of validation were as follows:

• Group 1 validated on the KDGHS2020 sample size, demography and household characteristics of the respondents.
• Group 2 validated on Reproductive health
• Group 3 validated on Child health
• Group 4 validated on Education and gender violence

The feedback session was fantastic, as it was both interactive and educative and so many issues were raised by the various groups. Those that needed explanations were discussed for better understanding while those that needs review were noted for further in-depth analysis.

In conclusion, most of the stakeholders and personalities appreciated the robust process and hard work put in place by the KDBS team, they noted that in spite of issues of insecurity in some parts of the state, the team defied all odds by going across all the LGAs to get the data. They also appreciated the wide range of indicators that the KDGHS2020 covered as well as the large sample size covered, this is first of its kind in Nigeria and even Africa at large. The survey data has exposed them to the most disadvantaged LGAs and the areas that needs urgent interventions. It has solved the challenge of understanding the issues surrounding out of school children.