Saving Rural Children

The rising deaths of children in the cities and rural areas across the country is attracting the attention of stakeholders, writes Omolola Itayemi

For several years, those responsible for the delivery of women during childbirth have been struggling to meet up. In most rural communities, traditional birth attendants (TBAs) have taken up that responsibility to care for pregnant women. Of course, that has contributed to the statistics on maternal mortality around the country.


But now, the Founder/ President of Wellbeing Foundation Africa (WBFA), Mrs. Toyin Saraki has pledged to help the growth and development of the midwifery profession because of its critical role in health care delivery.

Mrs Saraki made this pledge while on a visit to the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) in The Hague, Netherlands, where she reaffirmed her commitment to improving maternal health and preventing needless deaths during childbirth in Nigeria

During the meeting with the President of the International Confederation of Midwives, Frances Day-Stirk and the organisation’s chief executive officer, Frances Granges along with a member of the board and Board, Marian Van Huis, Mrs Saraki discussed the critical need to provide universal access to a well-educated, well-equipped and regulated midwifery workforce, especially at the grassroots level in developing countries like Nigeria.

She talked about the immense work her foundation is carrying out especially in the area of maternal and child health advocacy and equipping of the midwives with essential  tools like the WBFA Integrated Maternal Newborn and Child Health Personal Health Record (PHR), which supports expectant mothers and midwives to record and monitor progress during pregnancy.

Mrs. Saraki also stated that her foundation has worked with the federal and local governments of Nigeria to improve the education, working conditions and remuneration of midwives, as well as deploying midwives to underserved, rural areas of the country.

She said: “I am optimistic about the year ahead and excited to be working with the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) to achieve our shared vision of a world where every childbearing woman has access to a midwife’s care for herself and her newborn.”

Of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set out in the year 2000 by the United Nations during its Millennium Summit held at its headquarters in New York, which are to be achieved by 2015, goals 4, 5 and 6 have direct bearing on maternal and infant mortality. They are reducing child mortality rates, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

While most countries around the world are working round the clock to achieve the goals, less than two years to the target date, most Nigerians are skeptical that the country will achieve such a target by the year 2015 when more than half of the issues related with the identified goals are still being handled with laxity.

Maternal mortality, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes.

Child mortality, on the other hand, refers to the death of infants and children under the age of five. In 2011, 6.9 million children under five reportedly died down from 7.6 million in 2010, 8.1 million in 2009 and 12.4 million in 1990. Child mortality is more prevalent in the Sub-Saharan Africa with about half of child deaths being recorded there.

In Nigeria, experts said pregnancy, labour and early childhood are well recognised as being hazardous in most communities. Every now and then, women get pregnant and are delivered of their children some of whom often die from preventable diseases. Further problems such as delay in assessing health care, outdated and non-functioning equipment add to this malaise. Pregnant women should be able to get help whenever they need it and the hospitals should be conducive enough for them.

There are growing concerns about the way women and children die daily as a result of health complications in the country. According to experts, statistics on maternal deaths in the country are so shocking and unacceptable. It is said that a nation which allows her women to die in the process of bringing forth live only exists on borrowed time.

Official figures from the National Population Commission (NPC) few years ago claimed that there were 52,000 cases of maternal deaths in Nigeria annually; that is about 142 deaths daily. It also said that for every dead woman, there are 20 cases of morbidities such as obstetric fistula, infections and disabilities.

High maternal mortality rates is a significant health issue facing many Nigerian families. This distressing fact is compounded by findings which show that Nigeria has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world and is in fact contributing roughly 10 percent of the total world estimate of maternal deaths.

A recent report by UN and World Bank shows that 166 women die in Nigeria daily from pregnancy and childbirth complications, an increase from the 2010 statistics of 144 deaths daily. A similar study also revealed that in every 10 minutes, a Nigerian woman dies as a result of complications of pregnancy or childbirth.

Countless numbers of other women are disabled in birth related accidents on yearly basis. For every woman that dies, 15 – 20 other women suffer short or long-term disabilities among which are obstetric fistula, ruptured uterus, paralysis and other complications.
The World Health Organisation and UNICEF also showed that “a Nigerian woman has a 1-in-18 risk of dying in childbirth or from pregnancy-related causes during her lifetime, which is higher than the overall 1-in-22 risk for women throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the leading causes of maternal mortality in Nigeria remains negligence and some women’s’ preference for traditional methods of delivery which can be curbed by Maternal and Child Health Advocacy, equipping midwives with essential  tools like the WBFA Integrated Maternal Newborn and Child Health Personal Health Record.

Although President Goodluck Jonathan said at the inauguration of Otuoke Comprehensive Cottage Hospital in Bayelsa State last year that maternal mortality rates has dropped by 30 per cent in the last four years, the rates are still alarming as the the Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria said recently that “no fewer than 11,600 maternal deaths were recorded in Nigeria in the last six months” adding that “45 cases were recorded daily

Source: Punch