Safe Motherhood week: Devcoms harps on improved maternal health, 1,100 of 100,000 women still die around childbirth
(Participants at a round table discussion on safe mitherhool in group phorograpgh shortly after the meeting at Sanab Luxury, Kaduna on Tuesday. the event was organised by Devcoms in collaboration with NURHI)
As the world commemorate this year’s safe motherhood week, Developments Communications (Devcoms) has reiterated the need for aggressive campaign on the need by government at all levels to increase budgetary provision for child and maternal health saying, if that is well looked into and implemented, more than one-third of maternal related deaths would be averted and save the government a lot of resources.
The latest credible researches revealed that 1,100 out of every 100,000 women died around childbirth due to barriers which include to receive quality care, availability and and accessibility of services, political barrier, cultural barrier, economic barrier and barrier to have health personnel at grassroot level.
A good proportion of this number of women dying while giving lives could actually live if some of these barriers are given proper attention and addressed head-on.
The awareness campaign on the need to safe mother and child, which began at the safe motherhood conference in Nairobi, Kenya in 1987, has since attracted positive attention from both local and international organizations across the globe though, a lot still has to be done about it.
Addressing the cross-section of participants which comprise the media practitioners, CSOs and professional bodies in Kaduna on Tuesday, one of the resource persons who represented Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) and a Family Planning (FP) Advocate, Iliya Kure reminded the gathering that, the primary goal of safe motherhood is to ensure good health for the mother and her offsprings across the world with reference to developing countries.
According to him, safe motherhood components include antenatal care, skilled attendant at delivery, post delivery care (including post abortion care and FP) and breastfeeding.
The day he added is a day for sober reflection on how mothers, sisters, daughters, wives die needlessly from preventable deaths and to put acts together and be responsible partners in addressing this ugly development in Nigeria.
It is on this ground of acting together the media is asked to monitor budget across the tiers of government to ensure it is well implemented as well as increase campaign at every opportunity until everyone hears and take action.
Leading the discussion on issues around maternal health at the event, an FP advocate and Senior Health Correspondent with Daily Trust Newspapers, Christianah Alabi said, campaign on the subject matter can never be too much hence the need for all hands to be on deck.