women dying around childbirth can be reduced by 40% if we space pregnancies
(Participants at the media advocacy training organised by Devcoms, NURHI held in Kaduna)
In Kaduna State, Northwest Nigeria, available statistics on reproductive health showed that about 1,025 out of every 100,000 women are likely to die around childbirth due to complications that may arise at any period of pregnancy.
This pathetic death rate can actually be reduced by 40 percent if adequate attention is given by the state givernment by a way of investment is giving to Child Birth Spacing (CBS) alone.
Why should a woman die while trying to give live? This is one question concerned stakeholders have been asking and some answers already provided though not limited to what may be captured here and now.
It is against this urgly revelation that media practitioners who are interested in CBS campaign in Nigeria especially in Kaduna state, have been carefully selected and trained by a non-governmental organization, Development Communications (Devcoms) in collaboration with Nigerian Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (NURHI) on “Spitfire” advocacy approach.
One of the aims of the two-day agenda for spitfire advocacy training for Family Planning {FP) which ended in Kaduna on Wednesday was to increase awareness on the need for policy makers to invest more, be accountable to people as well as letting the people themselves know that the health of mothers is sacrosanct.
But we need to improve maternal health by reducing the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) in Kaduna, which currently is pegged at 1025 in every 100,000 live births to what is obtainable in other climes.
State Team Leader, NURHI, Kabir M. Abdullahi in one of his presentations had requested the participants to make commitments that would awake stakeholders to their responsibility and contribute towards reducing MMR and increasing the Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) in the state to the projected 47% from the present 20.2%. This percentage will help realise the national target of CPR by the federal government by 2020.
Earlier, the Programme Manager of Chief Media Consultant to NURHI project 2, DevComs, Omobonike Ogungbemi expressed satisfaction on how media content has helped the NURHI achieved so much results saying there is always room for improvement hence the media advocacy training.
It is a known fact that, DevComs has been strategical and tactical in its approach to CBS in Kaduna, Oyo and Lagos states where the project is currently taking place which has led to the huge success the programme has recorded between 2010 and 2016.
The communications big shot was optimistic that, with commitment of the participants, there would be aggressive campaign on CBS which will in turn provoke decision makers to action by making the service and personnel available in every community thereby saving more lives and improve productivity.
To Omobonike, “Some of the lessons we have learnt are that alternative approaches can be used to get results if one fails. For example, continuous communication of messages on family planning in the media can sustain its practice among beneficiaries and media users even when the project ends”.
She then recommended the need for continuous involvement of stakeholders with particular reference to media executives to sustain the support for family planning and its projection in the media.
The two-day intensive training saw the participants agreeing to make CBS a social norm by keep talking about it at every opportunity in order to change the narrative from myths and lies to reality of qualitative healthcare of women, men and their children which will eventually translate to a healthy society.
BY SOLA OJO (22-06-2017)