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.
Mrs Ada Ezeogu, a Nutrition Specialist with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said on Wednesday that 13 percent of death among children could be averted if mothers embark on exclusive breastfeeding.
Ezeogu made the assertion in Igbara Oke, Ondo state during a five-day workshop organised by Ondo State Ministry of Information in collaboration with UNICEF on “Production of Radio Scripts on Facts For Life’.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Wednesday commended the Kaduna State Government’s response to prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS.
The UNICEF chief on HIV/AIDS, Dorothy Mbori-Ngacha, gave the commendation at a meeting in Kaduna.
Mbori-Ngacha said that the state government would soon achieve the Prevention of Mother-to- Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV/AIDS.
She said that the state was able to test and counsel large number of women on HIV/AIDS in 2016.
I am very excited, albeit cautiously, because the Federal Government has vowed to tame that monster called child marriage. But I am cautious because the forces government will confront, even if the willpower is there, to win this battle are monstrous. Some of these forces are within government circles. But win we must because there is nothing good about child marriage. In fact, child marriage is paedophilia dressed in legitimate robes.
Senate Committee on Health, on Monday, mandated the Federal Ministry of Health to propose N96 billion in 2017 budget for tackling acute malnutrition in the country.
It further stated that government might be compelled to declared a state of emergency on malnutrition in the country if adequate funding is not made available for the condition.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Olanrewaju Tejuoso gave the directive at the committee’s “High Level Policy Dialogue on Nutrition” in Abuja.
The Taraba government on Friday rounded off the polio outbreak response campaign with five successful rounds of immunisation for under-five children.
Gov. Darius Ishaku, who inaugurated the final round at Lankaviri near Jalingo, expressed satisfaction that the last four rounds of the exercise recorded 100 per cent success in the 168 council wards of the state.
The governor said the campaign was imperative given the nearness of Borno which recorded new cases of wild polio virus recently.
With over 2.2 million children are threatened by malnutrition in the Northern part of Nigeria, the federal, state and local governments have been urged to give special attention to nutrition in the 2017 budgetary allocation so as to scale up infant and young children feeding practices and micro-nutrients deficiency.
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.
