Experts seek answers on stalled improvement in reproductive health access

Experts, deployed by the American funded Targeted States High Impact Project (TSHIP) are currently conducting a survey in Bauchi and Sokoto states to understand why access to reproductive health services has not improved in the past five years.

The proportion of women who give birth in a facility in Sokoto state between 2008 and 2013 has remained unchanged at 45 percent, though there have been some “discernible improvement,” in Bauchi state says Nosa Orobaton TSHIP’s Chief of Party in Nigeria.

According to the 2008 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) over 80 percent of pregnant women in Bauchi state birth their babies at home alone or assisted by unskilled birth attendants. Results from the 2013 NDHS released June this year highlights stalled progress in the area of reproductive health for women since 2003, with access unchanged since 2003 despite interventions and resources expended to improve reproductive health care for women in the country.

TSHIP, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) five-year programme was launched in 2009 in Bauchi and Sokoto state. One of its objectives was to increase the use of health services.

“We need more women to deliver in the hospitals,” Orobaton said on a phone chat with BusinessDay. “The key consideration is to understand through ethnographic research, what we need to know to improve these services. We have a team of experts asking these questions in Sokoto and Bauchi,” the public health physician with over 30 years experience reveals.

A comprehensive reproductive health programme includes family planning information and services, prenatal, assisted delivery and post-natal care, with referral for the management of obstetric complications. The low utilization of these facilities impact the mortality rate of women and infants; numbers which, despite notable improvements still remain high in these two northern states.

In a blog post for John Snow Incorporated (JSI) last year, Orobaton noted that as regards improving maternal health there were cultural, gender, community and equity issues that must be considered and adequately addressed.

“We need first of all, the evidence sense. We rely on researchers to generate it. And then wee need what I will call street-sense. Street sense encompasses the views of the community and activists. The third element is the common sense, which is derived from the policy makers and political leaders.

The Executive Director for the United Nations Fund for Population activity, UNFPA, Babatunde Osotimehin said Nigeria needed to invest more on maternal mortality to save more lives of women.

Osotimehin, speaking during a visit to Martin-Luther Agwai, the Chairman of the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) in Abuja noted that Nigeria has so far not been consistent in investing towards the needs of maternal and child health care. For one, commitments made by government at the family planning conference in London in 2012 still has not been redeemed.

 

Ameto Akpe