Volunteer doctors target women deaths
Obstetrics and gynaecologists are to start volunteering to mentor and supervise primary health care centres in their areas of residence under a new volunteer scheme targeting wider reductions in maternal and child deaths.The Voluntary Obstetrics Scheme (VOS) has already enlisted 87 obstetricians and gynaecologists, says the Society for Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria (SOGON) which […]
Obstetrics and gynaecologists are to start volunteering to mentor and supervise primary health care centres in their areas of residence under a new volunteer scheme targeting wider reductions in maternal and child deaths.
The Voluntary Obstetrics Scheme (VOS) has already enlisted 87 obstetricians and gynaecologists, says the Society for Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria (SOGON) which presented VOS to National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) in a memo last year.
Speaking as VOS launched Monday in Abuja, NPHCDA executive director, Dr Ado Muhammad said the scheme will help improve mentoring
and supervision in thousands of primary health care centres (PHCs) where the ongoing Midwives Services Scheme runs.
The experts working in tertiary or teaching hospitals “will provide supervision for PHCs that fall within their area of supervision; they will mentor human resource there, guide them to do the right thing and supervise their conduct,” said Muhammad.
“Quality of care”
“The overarching objective is to improve quality of care, because over the years what we have noticed is that people don’t go to PHCs, not because the facilities are not there, but because quality of care in those facilities is not up to standard,” Muhammad added.
According to the MOU, volunteers will work with facility officials to identify gaps, train health workers, gather and disseminate information related to best practices in maternal and child health care.
SOGON president, Dr Fred Achem, said VOS aims to bring the impact of tertiary training to the work of skilled birth attendants (SBAs) and possibly address the challenge of skewed distribution and nationwide shortage of SBAs.
Forty percent of all obstetricians and gynaecologists in Nigeria live and work in Lagos alone, noted Achem.
Only about four in 10 births are supervised by SBAs, according to the latest demographic health survey, and figures range from 82% in the southeast to 10% in the northwest.
“Babies are not always born by day or in teaching hospitals, but in homes and at night, where many of us don’t go,” said Nnenna Ihebuzor, NPHCDA’s director for primary healthcare systems development, in defence of the scheme.
Volunteer obstetricians and gynaecologists will start at sites where Midwives Services Scheme already exists, working with day cases and later introduced sessions that might require them to sleep over, depending on available accommodation.
It will implement a first-come basis for sites with likely large concentration of experts where site overload is expected. A likely location is the Lagos region, where 40% of all obstetricians and gynaecologists in Nigeria live and work.
Development partners have welcomed VOS, with the World Health Organisation citing support for mentoring of younger professionals and improved technical expertise for centres where volunteers are expected to work.
“There is a lot going on in the healthcare sector going unchecked that requires additional technical support,” noted Dr Andew Mbewe, representative of WHO, calling for professional health groups to initiate similar programmes for children.