SBI, the beginning of the second phase of the company’s Safe Birth Initiative (SBI).
SBI is focused on supporting doctors and nurses to achieve successful birth outcomes by strengthening the capacity of target public hospitals in three critical areas, including the procurement of vital maternal and neonatal medical equipment and supplies.
This is with the aim to enable safe deliveries and post-delivery emergency care; training biomedical engineering technicians to improve equipment maintenance and up time; and reactivating a large stock of abandoned medical equipment wasting away in public hospitals.
“The next beneficiary hospital equipment and supplies have arrived Nigeria and installation as
well as end-user training was completed in March 2019,” Bhupendra Suri, managing director, Coca-Cola Nigeria, said in a statement in April.
The successful commissioning of the medical equipment in EbuteMetta was born out of Coca-Cola’s partnership with the Federal Ministry of Health, the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals and an NGO, Medshare International Inc. Checks by BusinessDay reveal that the Federal Medical Centre EbuteMetta is the second out of the 15 hospitals set to receive medical equipment provided under the SBI.
During the first phase, 15 major public hospitals across Nigeria recommended by the Federal Ministry of Health, will receive hospital equipment, kits and supplies worth a total conservative value of about $10.8 million (over N3.8bn).
“Active and intentional collaboration between members of the private and public sector is key to transforming healthcare in Nigeria,” Clem Ugorji, public affairs and communications director, Coca-Cola West Africa, said.
Commending the good work of Nigerian doctors and nurses, Ugorji said, “We recognise that there is a limit to what they can do without the critical equipment required for effective diagnosis, testing and treatment. Through the Safe Birth Initiative, we are pleased to be able to donate vital equipment to aid the work currently being done to safeguard the lives of mothers and babies here at Federal Medical Centre, Ebute-Metta and the 14 other hospitals that will receive donations as part of the first phase of the SBI.”
Data from the National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) in 2013 revealed that Nigeria loses as many as 576 women per 100,000 childbirths and 37 newborn deaths per 1,000 live births, placing the country among the worst ratios for both maternal and newborn deaths
globally.
Through the SBI, 20 biomedical engineering technicians have completed an intensive two-week capacity training focused on improving equipment maintenance and uptime. The technicians, who came from 10 leading medical institutions across the country, comprising university hospitals, federal medical centres and general hospitals, were trained by US-based Engineering World Health (EWH) at the School of Biomedical Engineering, Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
