Fight maternal mortality with education

By Felicia Imohimi

Health minister Isaac Adewole has unveiled hospital equipment donated by Coca-Cola Company to National Hospital and identified girls’ education as key to the fight against maternal mortality.

Professor Adewole called for accelerated girls education in order to reduce maternal mortality rate in Nigeria.

The minister attributed the increasing maternal deaths to lack of education, empowerment and poverty.

According to him, when girls are educated, they are more informed about safe delivery.

“We need to empower them (women) and increase health services quality and availability.’’

Adewole noted that the death of a woman in childbirth creates a bad vicious circle as the baby would likely also die.

“When a woman dies, the family and community will suffer; when a woman dies the community will also be at loss.

“So, when we are making sure a woman survives, what we are telling ourselves is that the country will also benefit; so, it is a win win for all of us.

“The bottomline is that we must account for everybody, one death is not acceptable because it is assumed to be 100 per cent death.

“So, we must account for everyone as a nation; we need to take a number of cooperate actions; political will, among others, to prevent these deaths.

“It is our responsibility as policy makers, healthcare providers, philanthropists to work together to prevent our women from dying while giving birth.”

Adewole, who described maternal mortality as a disaster to any nation, however, noted that it is preventable.

According to the minister, the donation by Coca-Cola is part of efforts of the Federal Government to ensure improvement on health facilities.

He emphasised that the relationship was critical to enhancing corporate social responsibility.

The minister underscored the importance of ensuring the availability and affordability of essential commodities as well as improving health facilities with qualified manpower and equipment.

He said that the logical solution to ending maternal deaths included putting more money, issues of process, approach and the outcomes.

Similarly, Dr Jafaru Momoh, the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, commended the efforts of the Minister of Health and Coca-Cola for the donations.

He emphasised that the donation would help in reducing maternal perinatal morbidity and mortality as well as ensuring the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Momoh identified the departments that have benefited from the donations as include Paediatrics, Anaesthesia, Emergency and Radiography.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the donations included beds, ventilators, monitors, paediatric incubators, rescusitaires, CPAP machines, infusion pumps and ultra sound machine.

Others are wheel chairs, monitors, crash carts with defibrillator, theatre light and operating table, among others. (NAN)