Nurses sign MOU with Unilever to tackle maternal mortality, improve children’s healthcare

Unilever Nigeria has signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, NANNM, to help deliver the right level of healthcare to children and child-bearing mothers across the country.

The partnership is aimed at taking healthcare services to families and children down to the grass root level through the Nigerian Nurses and Midwives.

Addressing newsmen in Lagos, the brand building director, Unilever Nigeria, David Okeme said that Unilever is collaborating with NANNM as part of efforts in making the right health information available to parents to be able to take care of their children and such information can be effectively disseminated through the help of nurses.

According to him, “Nurses play a very big role in the community. From research it has been established that before people even showed up in the hospital, a lot of them must have made several visits or had several conversations with their family nurses. That is how important they are in terms of the role they play within the community and as such, our mission is to take health awareness to millions of consumers. If we achieve that through the nurses, who have the right level of connection with the community, that is one big objective achieved.”

“We have a strong school programme that we run where we teach children the right behaviours. Hopefully, that begins to put the right habits into them and prepares them for adulthood. We also have a fantastic portfolio of brands, thus, we are giving consumers the tools that they need to live well. While signing the agreement, we are celebrating two of our brands that have made this possible:  Vaseline and petroleum jelly, the world purest and oldest brand on the market of jellies. And we have Pears, the nation’s number one baby care in the country. These brands have created this platform.’’

Speaking also, the National President of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, Comrade Adeniji Abdurafiu Alani said “As a trade union and association, our main focus is to cater for our members and make the services of our members valuable to the public. In an attempt to do this, we collaborate with people and organisations like Unilever, a corporate entity that is doing similar things.”

“We believe that with our collaboration, people who are most vulnerable like women of child bearing age and children of school age will benefit a lot. And without them being cared for, the health indices of the country will be nose diving as children are so vulnerable because they are prone to certain preventable diseases which include worm infestation, malaria and any form of endemic diseases that are predominant in Africa.” He said.