A Non-Governmental Organisation(NGO), Seyifara Foundation, yesterday, tasked the Federal, state and local councils on the need to ensure maternal mortality rate in the country, just as it said nursing mothers should endeavour to attend antenatal during pregnancy and also ensure they deliver in certified hospitals of maternal homes.

Seyifara Foundation, in conjunction with the Oyo State government, during a sensitisation visit to Sabo Mother and Child Hospital and Bodija Health Centre, Ibadan, Oyo State, encouraged nursing mothers to register at certified hospitals during pregnancy and to also ensure that they take their babies for regular medical treatment.

The foundation said by doing so, children’s lives and that of their mothers, would be protected.

Addressing nursing mothers at the two centres, where they also donated baby clothes and drugs, representative of Seyifara Foundation, Olukunle Olubode, encouraged the mothers to breastfeed their babies and ensure that they are also immunised.

Speaking on the aims and objectives of Seyifara Foundation, Olubode said the foundation has helped several Primary Healthcare Centre across Africa to ensure that vulnerable pregnant women have access to quality healthcare before, during, after child delivery, basic material needs, safety in child spacing after previous childbirth, and educate pregnant women on the importance and need for Voluntary Family Planning (VFP).

According to him: “This is what the visit to Sabo and Bodija centres was all about.”

He also said the foundation provide support for quality education for children and help foster interconnected and culturally vibrant communities in which low-income residents and vulnerable children have the opportunity to attend school and be educated, which would lead to careers that will make them self-reliance and economically self-sufficient

He noted that part of what the foundation had done since it was founded in 2017 was to collaborate with governments, particularly at state and local council level to eradicate poverty and hunger in the rural area by encouraging  rural economic activities and achieve sustainable economic empowerment using agriculture as an economic tool through our Social Agriculture Project among others.

He disclosed that not less than 45 nursing mothers were given items both at Sabo and Bodija centers while plans are on the way to visit other centers across Oyo State.