‘We are looking at safer antenatal care’

Why is it imperative to focus attention on issues of family health? We found out that the maternal mortality and infant mortality rates are very high in Nigeria. In Lagos, we have 555 deaths in 100,000 childbirths. This is very high when you compare it with the developed countries; some of them don’t have more […]

Why is it imperative to focus attention on issues of family health?

We found out that the maternal mortality and infant mortality rates are very high in Nigeria. In Lagos, we have 555 deaths in 100,000 childbirths. This is very high when you compare it with the developed countries; some of them don’t have more than two or three. We should not have 555 deaths during child birth. 

Have you recorded any successes especially in the area of advocacy?

One of the areas we are focusing on is the issue of antenatal. When a woman is pregnant, how does she take care of herself? So we are looking at safer antenatal care to prevent problems during childbirth. The other one is the issue of routine immunization. You find out that in some areas in the country, they still don’t accept routine immunization and that is one of the problems that we are facing. We also found out that the rate at which women are getting pregnant is very, very high. So what do we do? The issue of family planning comes in. We are now encouraging women to embrace family planning because our findings have shown that the level of adoption of this practice is very low.

We also talk to children, the elderly too, to help us disseminate the information to our children who are still in the child-bearing age and we talk to our husbands.  We are now involving the religious and traditional leaders to talk to their followers and we are sure they would listen to them. This is what we are doing to increase the rate of adoption of family planning. We are not saying women should not give birth to as many children as they want but we want women to recover from the previous pregnancy so that they don’t suffer from any medical condition. It will also help the woman to take care of the child before giving birth to another one and that would also help us to reduce maternal and infant mortality and the husbands would be happy.

It is believed that poverty is one of the causes for the high rate or maternal and infant mortality…

Cuts in: You cannot run away from it. Nigeria is going through a recession and this is all over the world. This is why poverty eradication is one of the items under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) because poverty is a major problem and it has been worsened by the recession we are experiencing now which has taken its toll on families. Because when you don’t have balanced diet and there is no money to feed your children, there is problem.

How would you assess the efforts of government in tackling the high rate of maternal and infant mortality?      

We are agitating to governments especially when it comes to budget allocation, they should try as much as possible to increase the budget for reproductive health issues. When you increase the budget, more money would now be available to prevent many deaths occurring from child births. This is what we have been advocating for in our family health programme. There should be timely release of the allocation. The other issue is accountability. Once monies are released to the different organs of government, are they transparently utilised, how are we sure they are not diverted?

Do you think we have really embraced family planning?

With the advocacy being carried out by NURHI, we are making progress. In Lagos State, we are working in 10 local governments and in each of these local governments, we are taking five Primary Health Centres (PHCs)  to renovate their family health division. We found out that some of these facilities are available but they are not being used while some of them have become outdated. 

What we are now doing is to make it accessible and provide adequate facilities at the centres in order to attract our mothers in the communities to access them. We are also involving religious bodies. We have done a map of all the churches and mosques in these 10 local governments where we go to talk to our people and give them some advocacy materials. Even during this Ramadan, (the interview was done during Ramadan) we have been going round, visiting various organisations to talk to their leaders so that they can help disseminate the information to their members.

What are your words to those who still have misgivings about family planning?

What we discovered is that majority of them lack the knowledge. The only way is to sensitize them, at the community level, local government level, state level and also through the religious and traditional leaders. They need that basic education which is important for family planning.

You talked about lack of knowledge which is connected with the high rate of illiteracy among women especially at the community level. Are we, as a nation, investing on girl-child education so that this gap could be bridged?

I remember last year we had this symposium on humanitarian response to security. We invited youths from all over the local governments and we were supposed to have a lecture. Unfortunately the lecturer did not come. So we decided to make it an interactive session between members of our executive and the invited women. To our greatest surprise, when we started asking questions, none of them could answer anything. We noticed that this is a great problem. In fact one of the girls was in her 200 level in one of the Colleges of Education. She could not say anything. We changed to Yoruba, it was the same thing. It was then we concluded that we have a grave problem. This is what is happening in children’s education, it is very important for us to empower these children because once you don’t empower them, they become a nuisance, they become dropouts and that is what is happening in Makoko area of Lagos,  where we have the highest number of dropout girls. 

The issue of poverty is also another because once their parents cannot afford to send them to schools, what do we do? What the different organisations are doing now is to bring out the youths, do the little they can do; those that cannot go to schools, give them skills so that they can be self-reliant and once they are they realize that education is very important.

Is lack of education also responsible for low representation of women in leadership positions?

What the different organisations are doing now is to bring out these women, let them have that basic education so they can get involved in politics because the women percentage is very low and that doesn’t help us. Now we are agitating that those who are interested in politics should come out, then we encourage them, give them the necessary skills, knowledge so that other women would support them. But without that, the percentage would remain low. Gone are the days when we say behind a successful man, there is always a woman, now it is beside a successful man, there is a woman. In fact in some situations, the woman is the breadwinner of the family, if she is not well empowered, how will she take care of the family?

And do you think women would make the difference if given more opportunities in leadership positions?

Of course, more women are coming out because they are more knowledgeable than before. Women can begin to take important positions in the economy and assist other women to come up. This is not to say that we are trying to relegate the men, they are very important, they remain the heads of the family.