Despite hyped efforts by all tiers of government in Nigeria to reduce maternal and child mortality, no fewer than 700 newborns die daily in the country, Save the Children Initiative has said.
The international non-governmental organisation told National Mirror through one of its doctors, Oyinbo Manuel in Nigeria that all tiers of government in the country needed to do more to overcome albeit decreasing maternal and child health challenges in the country.
Dr Oyinbo said 254,000 babies die in their first month in the country, while maternal mortality ratio stands at 545 per 100,000 in the country. According to him, contraceptive prevalence rate is put at 10 per cent as skilled birth attendance rate is currently 39 per cent.
He stressed that Nigeria had about six/eight million births annually but ranks the highest in Africa in terms of the number of neonatal deaths and also contributes seven per cent of the world's total.
"Maternal and child mortality has continued to be one of the most serious development challenges in Nigeria despite several efforts, policies, initiatives and instruments aimed at reducing the incidences, and generally improve maternal and child health," he noted.
He however, blamed overconcentration of health workers with highest level of expertise in certain area of Nigeria as major contributor to the problems.
He said: "The shortage of skilled birth attendants in Nigeria is accentuated by a mal-distribution of available cadres skewed in favour of urban locations in the southern states of the country.
"Other factors responsible for this shortage include a freeze on employment in the public service of some states, poor working environment leading to external and internal brain drain to other professions," Oyibo decried.
He called for task-shifting among health workers through the empowerment of community health workers (CHOs, CHEWs and JCHEWs) whom he said constitute 42 percent of all human resources at the primary health care level with nurses, midwives or doctors (recognized as SBAs) constituting only seven per cent.
"To address this problem of shortage of skilled birth attendants at this level, a clear policy on task-shifting and task-sharing in the country should be put in place to guide the different cadres of health care workers, especially CHEWs, on how they can best contribute to the reduction of maternal and newborn mortality in Nigeria," he concluded.
National Mirror