WHO recognises Nigeria’s efforts in saving lives of women, children

The World Health Organisation on Wednesday said it recognised Nigeria’s efforts for saving lives of women and children.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Nigeria was celebrated at a high level event for ministers and senior participants at the World Health Assembly Session.

The Minister of State for Health, Dr. Muhammad Pate, was chosen as a panelist to speak on the saving of one million lives initiative.

Pate said that lack of commodity and health workers were identified as the two major causes of maternal and child deaths in Nigeria, making the country to search for a new approach.

He said that the new strategy that Nigerian government came up with focused on delivery.

“The Save One Million Lives focused on the delivery rather than the input,” he said.

The minister explained that “the initiative addresses vaccine preventable diseases, diarrhea diseases and health workers training and posting to rural areas.”

Patee said that the initiative made the government to increase the Midwives Service Scheme.

He said: “We recently recruited additional 6,000 more health workers and launched a pilot to scale up conditional cash transfer that encourages women to bring forward their children for immunisation and attend antenatal care.

“We have made progress with routine immunisation, which has risen to 78 per cent, and we are planning to use mobile health to empower health workers.

“We can confidently say we saved 218,000 lives in 2012, put one million women on antenatal care and 46 million children on vitamin A and vaccines.”

Pate said that Nigeria had changed its strategy in addressing maternal and child mortality.

Dr. Flavia Bustreo, the Assistant Director General Family, Women and Children Health, WHO, said that coverage of care for women and children had increased but inequalities persisted.

Bustreo said that global strategy for women and children health stimulated unprecedented support.

NAN reports that the event focused on increasing access to essential medicines and supplies in the world’s poorest countries where the greatest inequities exist.

It also featured the impact of innovation, overcoming barriers to access and address financing.

The event also highlighted efforts under various global initiatives with a focus on linkages with the UN commission on life saving commodities for women and children.