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Background: Nigeria's health sector aims to ensure that the right number of health workers that are qualified, skilled, and distributed equitably, are available for quality health service provision at all levels. Achieving this requires accurate and timely health workforce information. This informed the development of the Nigeria Health Workforce Registry (NHWR) based on the global, regional, and national strategies for strengthening the HRH towards achieving universal health coverage. This case study describes the process of conceptualizing and establishing the NHWR, and discusses the strategies for developing sustainable and scalable health workforce registries.Case Presentation: In designing the NHWR, a review of existing national HRH policies and guidelines, as well as reports of previous endeavors was done to learn what had been done previously and obtain the views of stakeholders on how to develop a scalable and sustainable registry. The findings indicated the need to review the architecture of the registry to align with other health information systems, develop a standardized data set and guidance documents for the registry including a standard operating procedure to ensure that a holistic process is adopted in data collection, management and use nationally. Learning from the findings, a conceptual framework was developed, a registry managed centrally by the Federal Ministry of Health was developed and decentralized, a standardized tool based on a national minimum data was developed and adopted nationally, a registry prototype was developed using iHRIS Manage and the registry governance functions were integrated into the health information system governance structures. To sustain the functionality of the NHWR, the handbook of the NHWR that comprised of an implementation guide, the standard operating procedure, and the basic user training manual was developed and the capacity of government staff was built on the operations of the registry.Conclusion: In establishing a functional and sustainable registry, learning from experiences is essential in shaping acceptable, sustainable, and scalable approaches. Instituting governance structures that include and involve policymakers, health managers and users is of great importance in the design, planning, implementation, and decentralization stages. In addition, developing standardized tools based on the health system's needs and instituting supportable mechanisms for data flow and use for policy, planning, development, and management is essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often analyses of depositional environments from sparse data result in poor interpretation, especially in multipartite depositional settings such as the Niger Delta. For instance, differentiating channel sandstones, heteroliths and mudstones within proximal environments from those of distal facies is difficult if interpretations rely solely on well log signatures. Therefore, in order to achieve an effective and efficient interpretation of the depositional conditions of a given unit, integrated tools must be applied such as matching core descriptions with wireline log signature. In the present paper cores of three wells from the Coastal Swamp depositional belt of the Niger Delta are examined in order to achieve full understanding of the depositional environments. The well sections comprise cross-bedded sandstones, heteroliths (coastal and lower shoreface) and mudstones that were laid down in wave, river and tidal processes. Interpretations were made from each data set comprising gamma ray logs, described sedimentological cores showing sedimentary features and ichnological characteristics; these were integrated to define the depositional settings. Some portions from one of the well sections reveal a blocky gamma ray well log signature instead of a coarsening-upward trend that characterises a shoreface setting while in other wells the signatures for heteroliths at some sections are bell blocky in shaped rather than serrated. Besides, heteroliths and mudstones within the proximal facies and those of distal facies were difficult to distinguish solely on well log signatures. However, interpretation based on sedimentology and ichnology of cores from these facies was used to correct these inconsistencies. It follows that depositional environment interpretation (especially in multifarious depositional environments such as the Niger Delta) should ideally be made together with other raw data for accuracy and those based solely on well log signatures should be treated with caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work examines ichnological attributes and variability of core samples from four wells (1–4) within the Coastal Swamp and shallow Offshore depobelts in the Niger Delta basin. The cores consist of facies interpreted as mainly shoreface deposits. These deposits are in successions and well-developed. The shoreface successions are divided up into a lower, middle and upper shoreface. The lower shoreface lies within fair weather wave base. The ichnofossils assemblages characteristically represent a diverse and abundant Cruziana ichnofacies. The middle shoreface contains swaly and lesser hummocky cross-stratified sandstones with an ichnofossil assemblage dominated by the Skolithos ichnofacies. The upper shoreface is dominated by planar and trough cross-beddings. Ichnofossils are fairly abundant and consist of deeply penetrating structures of the Skolithos ichnofacies. These facies reveal a wide range of variability, mostly limited to the lower and middle shoreface intervals. This variability appears to be determined by relative storm dominance and the episodic character of associated storm bed deposition. The successions are grouped into three: (1) high energy shorefaces consist entirely of stacked storm beds with moderate bioturbation, (2) moderate energy shorefaces comprises stacked laminated to burrowed intervals, recording recurrent erosive storm bed emplacement, followed by opportunistic colonization, and normally overprinted by resident fair-weather burrowing, and (3) low energy shorefaces ordinarily exhibit intense bioturbation with low preservation of storm beds. Discrimination between lower and middle shoreface deposits is mainly based on the resident fair-weather ichnofossil assemblage; under increased energy settings. In addition, based on storm intensity, relative water depth, storm frequency and shoreline character, the nature of coexistent lower and middle shoreface facies can differ significantly along strike. In some cases, the lower and middle shoreface differentiation was difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy thrust in Nigeria is to ensure qualified, skilled, and adequate health workforce to achieve universal health coverage. We designed a discrete choice experiment to determine the combinations of incentives that may increase the attraction and retention of frontline health workers. We conducted the study in Bauchi State amongst 145 students and health workers. Health workers are 14.6 and 14.4 times more likely to take up a rural posting or continue to stay in their present rural posts if there was basic housing and improvement of the quality of the facilities respectively. The preference for rural job location increased 6.17 times when good schools for children's education were provided. Ensuring availability of basic housing, improving the quality of health facilities, and ensuring good schools for children's educations are essential factors that may support attraction and retention of health workers. These strategies will support health care services in rural areas and achieving universal health coverage., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)