Friday Olokor
A public health organisation, Nigeria Health Watch, has expressed concerns over the increasing rate of maternal mortality in Nigeria, saying the country is not moving in the right direction to curb the menace.
According to the organisation, the government must conclude that women’s lives deserved to be saved to reduce maternal deaths because “no woman deserves to die while giving birth in the country.”
The Managing Director of NHW, Vivianne Ihekweazu, said this in Abuja during the second edition of the ‘Celebrating Womanhood Art Gala’ with the theme, ‘Elevating women’s voices for quality maternal healthcare.’
The event was part of the activities to commemorate International Women’s Month.
Ihekweazu lamented that Nigeria was nowhere near achieving the Sustainable Development Goal target of reducing the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births.
She said, “We have to say that Nigeria is not going in the right direction when we’re trying to reduce the number of maternal deaths. According to the SDG targets for 2030, we should have no more than 70 women dying from 100,000 live births.
“Currently, according to Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, it is 512. The recent WHO report showed that there was over 1000 women dying from 100,000 live births. We have to think as a country, how important are women’s lives. Are we even prioritizing them? So, I think collectively as a country, we have to decide that women’s lives are worth saving.
“But also importantly, we have to look at leadership. How are we involving women in the decision-making and influencing a lot of these policies? Do we have enough women sitting at the table who know their own personal experiences and understand why integrating and including women’s perspectives is important? So collectively as a country, we have to decide that we could not be the country where more women are dying during childbirth. It is not right.”
Ihekweazu said that the NHW and its partners were using art to highlight the importance of maternal health in the country.
While stressing the need for women’s voices to be heard to improve maternal health care, Ihekweazu added, “a woman knows her needs and she knows what her body needs and the experiences she has are close to her.
“So, when we think about maternal health care, it’s a journey, it’s nine months journey the woman goes through and throughout that nine-month journey, many issues that women may face at every step in her journey are very important”, she said.
Wife of the Kebbi State Governor and Founder of Medicaid Cancer Foundation, Dr. Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu, said it was no secret that Nigeria has a lot of maternal health issues in the country, including Kebbi state.
She said that various interventions from partners, the government, and civil society, have helped to improve maternal health indices in Kebbi state.
She said that the state leveraged the existence of community development committees to influence decisions and social behaviour, saying that had made a huge difference in maternal indices in Kebbi State.
The chair of the Health Sector Reform Coalition, Chika Offor, said that the lifetime risk of dying during pregnancy for a woman in the country is worrisome.
Offor commended what Nigeria Health Watch and partners had put in place to highlight the suffering of a Nigerian mother.
She called on the government to focus on reducing the high maternal and neonatal mortality rate in the country.
“The situation which has been the case for far too long is unacceptable and it is time we do things right,” she said.
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