Community health staff to use new rules to tackle child diseases

The Integrated Community Case Management (ICCM) targets interventions that prevent, cure or promote awareness of malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition in children aged less than five, and emphasizes referral of sick newborns.Under it, community health workers will treat childhood illnesses within communities.The launch came during the Newborn National Conference to draw up plans to help […]

The Integrated Community Case Management (ICCM) targets interventions that prevent, cure or promote awareness of malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition in children aged less than five, and emphasizes referral of sick newborns.
Under it, community health workers will treat childhood illnesses within communities.
The launch came during the Newborn National Conference to draw up plans to help cut the number of newborns dying annually in Nigeria from preventable and treatable causes.
The launched guideline endorses ICCM for countrywide implementation, said minister of state for health Khaliru Alhassan.
“This shows that the platform to reach every women, every newborn and child is already set. What is needed is commitment at state and [council] levels to ensure all these interventions reach every women and child wherever they are across the country.”
ICCM is the latest in a series of life-saving interventions launched after the Saving One Million Lives Initiative—which set a 2015 deadline to prevent 180,000 newborns from dying.
But the country still has the world’s second highest number of newborn deaths, mostly due to complications during childbirth, premature birth and infections.
“The key interventions that address issues are known and many are already in existence in the country. However, coverage is low,” said the minister.
At least two of every three newborn death could be prevented if  essential existing interventions reach all Nigerian women and their babies, he said, but the country need “multi-sectoral action at all levels of governance to increase coverage of life-saving interventions while close the equity gap for the poorest families.”
“The states have to buy in. if they don’t key into it, it will be dead on arrival,” said Dr Dayo Adeyanju, health commissioner for Ondo state, which has made impressive gains in reducing maternal deaths in hospitals through linkages with traditional birth attendants.
Global health experts writing in a special Lancet series Every Newborn in May estimated that providing a recommended package of care—antenatal, care during labour and childbirth, immediate newborn care and care of small children—could cost $4.5 billion a year by 2020, around 90 cents a person (N148).
By 2025, the cost could rise to $5.65 billion, around $1.15 a person—less than N200—but the interventions could save as many as 375,000 lives of mothers and babies each year.