Unguwan Maikanti is a rural community in Kaduna State facing maternal and child health challenges due to absence of basic health facilities and primary health centre. When NOTAGAIIN Campaign media team visited the community, they found the following;
 
None of the women in the village attends ante-natal, or visit the hospital for a check-up during pregnancy. The women leader, Elizabeth Jacob said they have lost scores of women who die in pregnancy and childbirth delivery process. She said the women have to be strong to deliver by themselves, or else, it is a different story.
 
“We lost scores of women during pregnancy and child birth, because we don’t have any place to take them for medical care if the pregnancy came with complications. Our women give birth at home without support from any birth attendant. We only give them herbs to drink,” she said.
 
The women lamented that their children complain of frequent stomach ache and also suffer from cholera. “You can see the kind of water we drink. Even dogs wouldn’t drink from the pond. The water smells and that is what we use to cook our food,” she said.
 
The only surviving well in the village, dug by a white lady hardly provides more than a bucket of water to whoever is fetching at a time. All the other wells have sunk down due to nature of the soil and because they have no rings. The water is only fetched very early in the morning.
 
Kaduna State Government says it is working towards revamping its dilapidated health facilities scattered in villages all across the state. It also said it is working towards standardising at least a primary health care centre in each of its 225 political wards.
 
The state introduced a law establishing the Primary Healthcare Under One Roof, a system that brings all the components of primary healthcare under one Management. This is meant to ease bottlenecks, as against what currently obtains, where the components are scattered in four different ministries.
 
The state government introduced mini ambulances meant for rural communities, like Unguwan Maikanti. It is hoped that the government and elected representatives would look into the plight of Unguwan Maikanti village and address their issues. The residents also appealed to government to come to their aid by constructing a bore-hole that will provide water to communities in the area.