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‘No woman should die during childbirth’

By Ijeoma Opara
01 February 2015   |   4:31 pm
  • Nursing mother’s death in hospital sparks protest over increasing maternal mortality “NOT again should a woman die at childbirth, enough is enough!’ These were the words chanted by activists, family, relatives and friends of Mrs. Folake Oduyoye, who died from cesarean delivery complications at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in December 2014…

Mrs 

• Nursing mother’s death in hospital sparks protest over increasing maternal mortality

“NOT again should a woman die at childbirth, enough is enough!’ These were the words chanted by activists, family, relatives and friends of Mrs. Folake Oduyoye, who died from cesarean delivery complications at the Lagos State Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in December 2014 after being detained for 43 days for failure to settle her bills.

  A rally that was organised by the Not Again Campaign group, an affiliate of the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), last week saw hundreds of people dressed in black taking up placards and protesting on the streets to say enough is enough to the incessant deaths of women during delivery.

  Speaking to The Guardian, the Executive Director WARDC, Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi noted that one of the reasons why rural women go to Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) instead of the hospitals is because they know that they cannot afford to pay the bills and will be detained, that is why it is critical to do something about this issue otherwise it would continue to happen.

   “We intend to use the Freedom of Information Act 2011 to demand for the immediate release of other women who are in a similar situation because we know that Nigeria is committed to the millennium development goal and the MDG goal five speaks about the issue of maternal health. We are also aware that Nigeria is collecting a lot of money to support women and so there should be no reason why women should be held in the hospitals.”

  “About 144 women die on a daily basis because of this carelessness and negligence. It is time to take a different cue on how to address the issue and that is why we are demanding for compensation because we need to use this single case to show a demonstration so that Mrs. Oduyoye do not die in vain.

  “We have requested the LUTH to tell us the number of women who have been detained and we also got information from UBTH in Benin, in Enugu and so it is happening throughout our public hospitals,” she said.

   Dr. Afolabi also noted that Section 5 of the Constitution is very clear that the only public institution that can detain is the police and the court and so LUTH does not have that capacity to detain anyone for any reason and so we insist we must stop all these needless deaths.

    “Women cannot continue to die because they don’t have money. You know the poverty situation of this country; how can a hairdresser whose husband is a welder pay N2 million bill? We plan to go to court and we are giving them 14 days within which to explain to the whole world, to declare the number of people in their custody and to release them, and if they don’t do that, we are going to court,” she declared.

   She also added: “People don’t pay bills in other countries, at least, they should design it in a way that it will be flexible for them to pay. She represents millions of potential women and if we do not take the desired steps, such deaths will continue.”

  “We are thereby calling on the Nigerian government to ensure that this is reduced; they should take every step to ensure that the put up budgets for maternal health, we will continue our enlightenment programmes until we see positive response from the government. This is a collective struggle and we must all fight to end the death of women at child birth.”

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