MSH Decries Maternal, Child Health in Nigeria at 10

Posted on: Wed 06-04-2016

Many lives of mothers and children are still being lost in Nigeria despite commitments made by government and private organizations working on health care in the country, Management Sciences for Health, MSH, has said. Country Representative of the US-funded organization, Dr. Zipporah Kpamor, said this in Abuja recently on the occasion of 10th year anniversary of the institution.

“It is unacceptable that more than 150 women die every day due to preventable causes, that 2,300 children die daily, and another one in five Nigerian children will not celebrate their fifth birthday. But, we believe that the situation is not hopeless as indicated by the interruption of the wild polio virus transmission and recent success with the control of the Ebola epidemic show,” Kpamor said.

She added: “We have titled this event ‘celebrating 10 years of improving the health of women and children in Nigeria’ in order to once again refocus attention on the plight of women and children who continue to die from preventable causes despite proven public health interventions that can end this.”

While calling on stakeholders in the country to strengthen efforts in turning the tide, Kpamor informed that MSH places high premium in working with government in the country to end preventable deaths among women and children.

According to her, with funding from the US Agency for International Development, MSH works with 19 states to implement Prevention Organizational Systems AIDS Care and Treatment Project (ProACT); Leadership, Management and Governance Project (LMG project); Systems for Improved Access to Pharmaceutical and Services (SIAPS); Systems Transformed for Empowered Actions and Enabling Responses for vulnerable children and their caregivers (Steer); and Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) Other programmes the organization had implemented in the country include Program to Build Leadership and Accountability in Nigeria’s Health System (PLAN-Health); The Community-Based Support for Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Nigeria (CUBS); Tuberculosis Care I Project (TB Care I) and; and Health for All (Universal health Coverage) “In the past 10 years, through our interventions a total of 2,097,749 individuals were counselled and tested for HIV including 750,166 pregnant women; 9,580 placed on life saving medications and 66,881 Orphans and Vulnerable Children were served directly and indirectly.

An estimated 4.4 million people have been reached through communities outreach activities by MSH’s PEPFAR Fellows; 100 Civil Society organizations have benefited from our institutional strengthening program, and have gone on to raise 49.8 million dollars in additional funding from a variety of donors and 6232 persons were enrolled into the community- based health Insurance scheme in Rivers and Akwa Ibom States in line with Universal Health Coverage (UHC). “On the whole, MSH has contributed to saving 24,000 lives and improved the well-being of 36,000 vulnerable children. For a country like Nigeria, we are probably asking, but how significant is that, we know that the journey of a thousand steps, starts with one!,” she furthered.

By: Marcus Fatunmole

National Mirror News

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