Save the Children signs MoU with Lagos government

Worried by the poor healthcare coverage in Lagos and Nigeria at large, Save the Children International has signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lagos State Government, to ensure children under the age of five have access to quality healthcare, especially children living with diarrhea.

Speaking at the ceremony in Lagos, Area Operations Manager, Save the Children, Lagos and Rivers States, Mr. Roy Chikwem, said the MoU would build strong relationship between Lagos State Government and Save the Children in reducing rate of child mortality, especially of children under five.

Chikwem said: “We have programmes on ground that would benefit children in Lagos, which include interventions in nutrition, child survival, maternal, newborn care and child health education, protection and better support for frontline health workers”.

“We have three projects in Lagos and those projects based in local councils include: HIV and AIDs project; Stop Diarrhea Initiative Project and Capacity Building Project for health workers. We want to put resources together to improve people’s access to healthcare irrespective of their financial status. At the moment, we are about to roll out distributions of vaccines for children in the local councils. Over 20, 000 people have benefited from our projects and we are going to reach more people.”

“Under Healthcare Workers Capacity Building Project, we have covered over 4500 healthcare workers across three states including Lagos.”

Director Development Partnerships Department, Ministry of Economic Planning and Budgeting, Lagos State, Mr. Adetayo Bankole, representing Commissioner for Finance, said the government decided to partner with Save the Children because it knows it cannot offer quality healthcare to the citizenry alone.