By Lucy Ladidi Ateko Abuja

The Seconds for Good Charity Initiative (S4G) has called for urgent and coordinated action to tackle Nigeria’s maternal mortality crisis, warning that weak primary healthcare systems, financial barriers, cultural practices and gaps in emergency referrals continue to put women’s lives at risk.

Founder and Executive Director of S4G, Maureen Ideozu, made the call in Abuja during activities marking the organisation’s fifth anniversary, where stakeholders examined persistent barriers to maternal healthcare access and called for stronger community and government intervention.

Ideozu said the organisation’s experience working with women in underserved communities showed that many pregnant women do not necessarily reject antenatal care, but are prevented from accessing it by poverty, cultural restrictions and weaknesses within the healthcare system.

According to her, some women struggle to raise money for antenatal registration, while others cannot afford delivery-related expenses.

She also identified male decision-making and cultural expectations as factors that can delay women from seeking care.

“Some of these women actually want to go, but there are other underlying issues. One of them would be funds,” Ideozu said.

She disclosed that S4G had, on one occasion, provided N20,000 to enable a woman in labour access hospital care after she initially planned to deliver at home because she could not afford the cost.

Ideozu said the organisation had reached about 1,000 women through its maternal health outreach programmes over the past five years, while another 400 women have benefited from a project funded by the UNDP Global Environmental Facility Small Grants Program, which empowered them with skills on climate-smart agriculture – building their resilience for sustainable livelihoods.

She said S4G had also worked with secondary school students on adolescent sexual and reproductive health education.

The founder further raised concerns over conditions at some primary healthcare centres visited by the organisation in Abuja, saying some facilities lacked qualified personnel and basic equipment.

She said one of the facilities had no midwife, while others operated with limited or part-time personnel.

According to her, S4G has therefore been supporting some outreaches with consultant obstetricians and qualified midwives to provide professional care to women.

Ideozu also identified weaknesses in the referral system as a major challenge, noting that families are sometimes forced to find their own means of transporting women experiencing emergencies to secondary healthcare facilities.

She called for stronger investment in primary healthcare, better training for health workers and improved emergency referral systems.

“We need to strengthen the primary healthcare,” she said, adding that the challenge required collective action from government, communities, health professionals, the private sector and development partners.

She also called for a dedicated roundtable on maternal health and primary healthcare at the National Assembly, saying communities and beneficiaries should have greater input in policy discussions affecting them.

The Chairperson, Senate Committee on Women Affairs, Senator Ireti Kingibe, represented by her aide, Becky Ephraim, called for stronger accountability in Nigeria’s health system, saying every maternal death from preventable causes represents an institutional failure.

Kingibe said maternal health commitments must move beyond policies and budgetary allocations to produce measurable improvements in the lives of women.

She said maternal mortality should not be reduced to statistics, stressing that every death leaves families and children to bear consequences that could last a lifetime.

“Too often, policy discussions reduce maternal deaths to sterile statistics, ratios and trends, but a statistic does not capture the void left in a home when a mother passes,” she said.

The senator said maternal health was not an isolated medical issue but a fundamental matter of women’s rights, equity, national development and human dignity.

She called on governments at all levels to work together to ensure that primary healthcare facilities function effectively.

“A woman experiencing labour complications does not stop to analyse the constitutional division of powers between the Federal Government, the state and the local government area,” she said.

Kingibe also called for stronger legislative frameworks to expand social health insurance and financial protection for expectant mothers.

“Poverty should never become a death sentence for an expectant mother,” she said.

The senator added: “We do not need another strategy document to gather dust. We need execution. We need coordination and we need uncompromising accountability.”

Also speaking at the event, the representative of the Chairman, Board of Directors of S4G, Mr Nnanna Ude, said the organisation was using its fifth anniversary to move the conversation on maternal health beyond offices and into the wider public space.

Ude said the aim was to generate a collective call to action on maternal mortality by bringing together policymakers, community leaders, professionals, young people and other members of society.

He said maternal healthcare was a societal issue requiring sustained intervention, particularly for women in rural and underserved communities.

“Women are going through a lot of difficulties when it comes to accessing maternal healthcare. But we think that the conversation needs to be taken out of the offices into the public space,” he said.

According to him, the five-year journey of S4G was only the beginning, stressing that the organisation remained committed to working towards improved maternal health outcomes and stronger support for vulnerable women.

The village head of Pigba Sama Community, Chief James Dogo Zakoyi, said the organisation’s community engagements had exposed several factors contributing to delays in maternal healthcare access.

He identified financial constraints, male control over healthcare decisions, anaemia among women, unreliable referral systems and inadequate staffing at primary healthcare facilities as major concerns.

He said some women could not pay for antenatal registration or delivery materials, while others required approval from their husbands before seeking medical care.

Zakoyi urged stakeholders to treat maternal mortality as a crisis requiring immediate intervention, stressing that many maternal deaths could be prevented if women had timely access to quality healthcare.

The S4G anniversary activities, held under the theme, “A Matter of Seconds: Five Years of Saving Lives, Strengthening Communities and Inspiring Hope,” included a symposium and report launch as well as a charity walk to raise awareness on maternal health.

The organisation said its five-year work had focused on improving maternal health outcomes, empowering vulnerable women, adolescent sexual and reproductive health education and strengthening community resilience.