Governor Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi State has stressed the need for stakeholders in the health sector to place special emphasis on primary healthcare in order to eradicate problems associated with maternal and child health, which have over the years taken a great toll on the people.
Over the last 15 years, the international community has made great strides in improving child health. But, with millions of children under the age of five dying each year from preventable and treatable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia, the job is far from finished.
Prof. Oladapo Ladipo, President of the Association of Reproductive and Family Health (ARFH), says 75,000 women are at risk of transmitting syphilis to their unborn children annually in Nigeria.
Ladipo made this known when he was speaking with newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said that the figure was drawn from the recent survey conducted by Mamaye Evidence for Action and PATH, both are Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs).
The Maternal Newborn and Child Health Social Protection Scheme has taken off in Adamawa State.
The programme, supported by the European Union and UNICEF, was flagged off on Monday by wife of the state governor, Maryam Bindow.
At the ceremony in Malabu village of Fufore Local Government Area, Mrs. Bindow urged mothers, who are the major beneficiaries, and health workers involved in the scheme to give the intervention their full support.
UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, has emphasized that universal Children’s Day is more than a day to celebrate children everywhere, but an annual opportunity to recommit ourselves to protecting the rights of every child.
Lake said in a statement that the universal, inalienable rights that the world pledged to protect on this day in 1989, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is the “Rights to dignity and security. To be treated fairly and to live free from oppression. To have a fair chance in life.
The visit by civil society activist and journalists to an outpatient therapeutic point where malnourished children from Katsina state and neighbouring Niger Republic are receiving treatment further exposes the enormity of challenges ahead as far as combating malnutrition is concerned, ANDY ASEMOTA writes
As part of efforts to improving maternal, newborn and child health outcomes and consolidating on the gains of the Midwives Service Scheme (MSS), the Federal Government through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) is deploying 1,473 newly graduated basic midwives to Primary Health Care (PHC) facilities in rural areas throughout the 36 States and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja.
A new report launched on Tuesday by the Family Planning 2020, FP2020, has ranked Nigeria among the worst countries in the delivery of family planning services. Nigeria is second to India in a global ranking on the number of women that die as a result of pregnancy.
The report used as baseline the target set at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning where countries made a commitment to mobilise resources to enable 120 million women and girls use modern contraception by 2020 in 69 poorest countries, including Nigeria.
Access to and utilization of healthcare services is related to the availability of the right type of care for those in need, financial accessibility, quality of care, geographical accessibility, and acceptability of service provided. In developing countries like Nigeria, access to quality health services in the public sector has been a universal challenge owing to the aforementioned factors. The state of the Nigerian public health system is largely dysfunctional and grossly under-funded.
