As part of measures to prevent increasing maternal mortality in the state and beyond, the Ondo State Government has started a re-training exercise for 80 nurses and community health officers based on partographic monitoring of labour and strategies.
The partographic monitoring of laboir and strategies, according to an official statment, was conducted towards preventing maternal mobidity and mortality in the health system and to boost efficiency of the system in child delivery.
Oladiran Ayodeji, the Head of Department, Obstetrics, and Gynaecology, University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital (UNIMEDTH), Ondo State, who spoke on the overview of measures meant to reduce maternal mortality in the health sector, said the workshop would enhance the birth attendants in child delivery.
BusinessDay reports that the retraining workshop was organized by the Ondo State Primary Health Care Development Agency (OSPHCDA) for the health practitioners of the Ondo East Primary Health Care Authority in the Maternal and Child Health Department.
According to him, the most common causes of maternal mortality was hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (42.9%) and sepsis (42.9%). While Postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) was responsible for 14.2% of maternal deaths.
Ayodeji said; “these actions are more likely to halt the progression of near-miss to maternal mortality. The healthcare seeking behaviour of women in the community must be improved through advocacy, and the enlistment of community leaders assured through the periodic outreach interactions with different strata of the community.
“The issues of maternal mortality is a worldwide problem, but most of it comes from Nigeria, and our country is now becoming embarrassment to itself and the whole world and is not that we cannot take care, or solve this problem.
“We cannot continue to stay in the teaching hospitals, hoping and thinking that the problem of death that will see in the teaching hospitals will just go away. Patients that die comes from our community and that is why we are engaging our health workers from the grassroot now.”
Busola Adufe, Head of Local Government Administration, Ondo East, who declared the one-day workshop open, appreciated the Department for organizing the workshop and said the training would help the participants to know their job better.
According to her, the purpose of the workshop was to teach their health practitioners on how to prevent the maternal mobidity and mortality in the health system of Ondo state.
Earlier, Babatunde Akinbinu, the Primary Health Care Coordinator and Medical Officer of Health for Ondo East LGA, said; “the essence of this training is to retrain our staff on how to prevent this maternal mobidity and mortality in the health
“We found out that we needed to train and retrain our staff on some of these life saving skills, and we are excited with the cooperation we got from the Department of Obstetrics, and Gynaecology, University of Medical Sciences (UNIMED), Ondo State Primary Health Care Development Agency and the Administrative leadership here in Ondo East Local Government Area.
“We expect that there would be an improvement in our health sector indices on maternal mobidity and mortality in Ondo State, and especially in this local government area.”
Oluwatosin Akomolafe, one of the participants, who appreciated their Coordinator for organizing the workshop for them, said; “it is a refreshing workshop because so many things we have forgotten in part, we were able to remember them again, which will even help us to improve in our services to our patients and it will also increase our skills and proficiency.”
