Akwa Ibom records below average in MNCH week campaign

It was a mixed bag of success and not so impressive coverage in the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health week (MNCH) campaign in Akwa Ibom State with four local government areas of the state recording below 46% in overall performance.

The local government areas that recorded below average were Uyo which had 27 percent, Okobo, 43 percent, Nsit Ibom 45 percent and Ibesikpo Asutan 43 percent.

According to the report of the weeklong activity which took place in all the 31 local government areas of the state, a copy of which was made available to Businessday in Uyo, services rendered during the week included Vitamin A  supplementation, deworming, routine immunisation, screening for acute/severe  malnutrition, promotion of key household practices and birth registration.

Other activities included Iron supplementation and use of Long Lasting Insecticide Nets for pregnant woman as well as the integrated HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT).

The report showed that 77 percent coverage was achieved in vitamin A supplementation, deworming recorded 29 percent; iron Folate supplementation had 11 percent while Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) had 31 percent. During the period, 4,101 children were found to be malnourished. Apart from deworming, coverage for other interventions was lower than what was obtained in the last round of the campaign held in July 2015.

Also, during the MNCH week, 4,288 births were registered, 1,766 women were tested for HIV with 36 of them (2 percent) tested positive, fourteen out of the 864   pregnant women (1.6 percent) tested positive , while 22 out of the 902 other women of child bearing age tested positive (2.4 percent.

In an interview, Victor Bassey, focal person of the programme identified the lack of support from local government councils as one of the factors that impeded the success of the activity adding that the bulk of the support came from United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and Helen Keller international.

“Very low political will, low financial support from governments and poor mobilisation were some of the other challenges experienced during the exercise,’’ the report said.

The report however suggested the immediate employment of more health personnel to “replenish the retired and old ones and sustained advocacy to faith based and corporate institutions to assist in programmes like this.

“Funds should be made available to hire the services of adhoc workers,’’ adding that if  “half the funds and efforts put by partners and government into a one commodity measles campaign were made available for a 17 commodity MNCHW, it would have been a great success in addressing equity problem in health programming,’’ the report said.

The weeklong campaign gulped N8.4 million.

ANIEFIOK UDONQUAK