Members of the House of Representatives on Thursday renewed call for provision of affordable, effective and efficient healthcare service in the rural communities across Nigeria.
The lawmakers gave the charge during the debate on the motion sponsored by Oladipupo Adebutu (APC-Ogun) who expressed regret over the decline in the life expectancy in the country.
Women’s health indicators for Nigeria rank among the worst in the world. Nearly 30% of its women aged 15-19 year are or have been married and more than a fifth of the women begin child-bearing in their teens. The maternal mortality ratio stands at 545 deaths per 100 000 live births nationwide but nearly double that ratio (1026) in the North-West region.
The National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) has assured donors of improved transparency and accountability in delivering primary healthcare services in Nigeria.
The Executive Director, NPHCDA, Dr Faisal Shuaib, made this known while briefing newsmen in Abuja on Friday.
The NPHCDA boss said he has been working to reposition the agency to imbibe the culture of transparency, accountability, performance management and value for money.
Disturbed by the high incidence of maternal and child mortality, nine countries – Bangladesh, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda – have committed to halving preventable deaths of pregnant women and newborns in their health facilities within the next five years.
Some doctors in Nigeria use candlelight to perform operations due to the dearth of funding for the sector, a medical practitioner told a Senate panel during a public hearing on the 2017 budget yesterday.
Benjamin Anyele, chairman, Health Sector Reform Coalition, said this when he delivered a keynote address to the surprised lawmakers.
“It has gotten so bad that Nigerians are running mental without knowing, nurses use candlelight to assist in carrying out operations,” Anyele told the lawmakers.
Theirs is not lack of facilities as Jigawa State boasts a number of medical facilities even at the grassroots, but the problem is that the facilities have far too few personnel and too little equipment and drugs to be of much help to the residents.
Buji Local Government Area with a population of 92,371, made up of crop farmers and Fulani herdsmen, is an example. Its headquarters, Gantsa, hosts local, state and even federal agencies such the police and National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), among others.
After losing her fourth child during delivery at the house of her regular traditional birth attendant (TBA), 42 year–old Kemi Ariyo contracted spiritualists to get to the root of her problems. “I was widely accused to be a witch as a result of the demise of my babies,” Kemi said. “So I approached the spiritualists who pray for pregnant women and see to the delivery of their babies”.
Although Family Planning (FP) commodities are free in Lagos state, stakeholders in the health sector have said lack of consumables and poor state of FP clinics at the Primary Health Cares (PHCs) have led to the increase in maternal death in the state.
The Kaduna State Government on Tuesday said it would recruit 1, 245 healthcare workers to address the challenges of maternal health.
The State Commissioner for Health, Dr Paul Dogo, disclosed this at a one-day stakeholders’ forum in Kaduna.
The forum is being organised quarterly by a coalition of Civil Society Organisations known as Kaduna State MNCH Accountability Mechanism (KADMAN) in collaboration with the Community Health and Research Initiative (CHR).
IN recognition of the important role that they play in the provision of healthcare, especially at the grassroots, Traditional Birth Attendants, TBAs, have been recognised as indispensable to healthcare delivery in the country.
A past Chairman of the Lagos State Traditional Medicine Board, Dr. Bunmi Omoseyindemi who stated this position, said the State government should put in place capacity building programmes to boost the confidence of TBAs to safely take deliveries and make quick referrals in case of emergency.
