…UNFPA wants Kano to play bigger role in reducing maternal mortality
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says Nigeria, which currently has 2 percent of global population, is carrying about 10 percent of the global burden of maternal mortality.
A development the agency described as unacceptable, calling on government of sub-national state entity, such as Kano, which is home to the highest maternal mortality incidence to scale up activities to reduce the trend.
Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director, UNFPA, stated what Nigeria, and the state in particular, needed to do to reduce the trend, pointing out that the first thing was to develop a crop of trained people that would attend to pregnant women during child birth.
Osotimehin made this call on Monday, while speaking during a courtesy visit to Kano State governor, as part of his ‘Two High-Level Advocacy Visit to Kano and Kaduna.’
The UNFPA chief executive disclosed that high incidence of maternal mortality and other health challenges, like VVF, which is prevalence in the Northern part of the country, were provoked by a failed system.
According to Osotimehin, one of the ways of addressing the situation is for the government at all levels, particularly those of the Northern states, to put in place polices and programmes to boost Girl-Child education.
When girls are encouraged to go to school and sustained to remain there, it would go a long way in assisting them to be matured enough before getting married, and out of contacting VVF, he said.
In addition to encouraging the girl-child education, the government of the Northern states are also to put in place a system that will ensure child birth attendants are available everywhere, he said.
Using the case of Ethiopia to buttress his argument, he said such measure had helped the African country, which was able to produced 40,000 birth attendants within a very short time to reduce maternal mortality by as much as 60 percent.
He expressed the readiness of his agency to work in partnership with Kano State in the production of birth attendants as well as provision of counselling on child spacing for women.
Responding, Governor Umar Abdullahi Ganduje commended the UNPFA executive director for the advocacy visit, and said his government shared the concern of the body as regard maternal mortality issue.
As a way of addressing the challenge, the governor said his administration in collaboration with the Kano State Emirate Council was proposing a legislation that would put marriage age for women in the state at 18 years.
In order to reduce the incidence of maternal mortality, he said his government was partnering the Gates Foundation and Dangote Foundation to build new facilities in the rural areas.
He said his administration had also commenced the training of birth attendants that would attend to women during childbirth, adding that so far, 1,936 traditional child attendants had been trained, and four of them were stationed at each of the political wards in the state.
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