UNFPA, Senate seek more investment in reproductive health

The senator representing Lagos Central and Chair of Senate Committee on Women Affairs, Oluremi Tinubu yesterday joined stakeholders in the reproductive health to canvass for greater accountability and investment for life-saving health care delivery for marginalised women, newborns, children, and youth.

Tinubu, who spoke at a summit on accountability for reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health (RMNCAH), in Abuja yesterday, noted blamed previous governments for failing to do what they should do, but noted that the government and all stakeholders now have another opportunity to do the right thing.

She also called for the passage of the National Health Act, describing the document as hope for the sector.Tinubu said: “Nigeria should have moved to other challenges by now instead of still battling with maternal and child deaths. It is a challenge for this administration. We want to do the right thing for our people. Our people deserve the best. That is why I am here to learn what legislations need to be put in place to support this quest.

“I remember that as a member of the Senate Committee on Health in the last Senate, we moved for the passage of the National Health Act. Now that has been done and implementation is yet to start. We need to do what we can do to deliver the dividends of democracy to our people. Our people deserve the best.”

Also speaking, the Resident Representative of the United Nation’s Population Fund (UNFPA), Madam Ratidzai Ndhlovu lamented that over 100 women and girls die from preventable pregnancy and childbirth related complications every day in Nigeria.

“Major causes include post partum haemorrhage, eclampsia, infection and unsafe abortion. We therefore need to scale-up access to the available evidence based, high impact cost interventions to avert these deaths,” she noted.

Speaking on accountability, she noted: “Accountability for maternal health requires periodic and transparent dissemination of key results particularly on maternal mortality, and its discussion with stakeholders and this can be achieved by the institutionalisation of maternal and perinatal and response at all levels of health care in the country.

This will enable us collect and review routine data on maternal death, disaggregated by states and will keep reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health on the front burner, provide evidence for advocacy, support a case for more resources and enable tracking of progress on a short term basis.”

Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, stressed how the Ministry would work with other stakeholders to develop what he described as a collective agenda for mainstreaming accountability mechanisms at all levels of government and governance of the sustainable development goals.

“The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as adopted by all countries needs concerted efforts to meet the goals especially in Nigeria. The interventions need to be coasted and resources harnessed to meet the country’s set goals. Our present maternal mortality ration of 576 per 100, 000 live births from the 2013 National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) is a far cry from the global target of less than 70 per 100, 000 live births by 2030. We need to reduce this ratio by a minimum of 88 per cent in the next 15 years. Newborn mortality rate needs to be reduced by at least 68 per cent and under five mortality rate needs to be reduced by at least 80 per cent.”

The Minister urged civil society organizations to report on service delivery in the nation’s hospitals.“The Ministry has recently kick started the process of maternal death and perinatal review, surveillance and response. This we believe will improve quality of service during the critical period of childbirth and postnatal period. We recognise the critical role of civil society organizations, academia, the business community, media, funders and other stakeholders in holding each other and governments to account for health outcomes.

We shall continue to disaggregate and disseminate data and provide more information on maternal, child and adolescents’ health publicly through the Federal Ministry of Health website which is being upgraded to provide information to the public, engage with stakeholders to ensure participation in developing plans and programmes and monitoring and review of implementation.”