We’ve achieved remarkable decrease in maternal, infant mortality – Otumara

[Mirror]

Delta State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Joseph Otumara, says the free healthcare programmes of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan has led to a reduction in maternal, infant and under-five mortality ratio in the state. Excerpts:

International standard Delta State University, Teaching Hospital, Oghara

Overview of the health sector

This government has achieved a lot. About five and a half years ago, precisely the November 27, 2007, Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan launched the free maternal healthcare programme and the whole idea about the programme is to reduce maternal and infant mortality ratio. Since then, all pregnant women in the state whether indigenes or non-indigenes receive free treatment in any of the 65 government hospitals in the state from conception until delivery. They receive free treatments six weeks after delivery. I must tell you that it has been quite successful. Deltans have been very happy and we have caused a remarkable decrease in maternal mortality, infant mortality and under-five mortality. The basic reason why maternal and infant mortality has been high in the country is that most of the patients who are supposed to make use of the hospitals cannot assess them as a result of poverty and ignorance. With the free maternal health programme declared by the government of Dr. Uduaghan, the state has made a remarkable decrease in maternal, infant and under-five mortality ratio. For instance, before we started the programme, maternal mortality was 456 per every 100,000 deliveries and pregnancies, but it has gone down and today we are at 206 per 100,000 pregnancies and deliveries. You can see that we have halved it and this is because our programmes have been tailored towards the generality of the people who actually need the programme. We believe that as we build more infrastructure, as we have done in Warri and Ekpan, which has the largest attendance of pregnant women in terms of maternal healthcare, more people would be accommodated and I am sure that we will drive that figure further down. We are actually expecting to get to a point where we will have a two-digit figure. Also, I am sure that we will achieve one of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals which is two years from now that maternal mortality must be reduced by two-thirds. We will definitely achieve that because we have already achieved about 50 per cent reduction. It is the same thing with underfive mortality.

Distribution of hospitals

We have 65 functional government hospitals and they are well distributed. In each of our 25 local government areas, there is an average of about three but some have four. What we have done is that within a five-kilometre radius as stipulated by the World Health Organisation, people should be able to walk into a hospital to receive medical attention. We also have about 450 functional health centres and some local governments have been able to key into what we are doing at the state level in the free maternal and under-five programmes like Ethiope West.

Manpower

Delta State can claim today that it has the highest number of medical doctors and nurses in its payroll among other states of the federation. For instance, one of the things that was mentioned when Governor Uduaghan was conferred with the fellow of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was that we employed the highest number of obstetricians and gynaecologists. I used to jokingly tell some people that the number of doctors in Central Hospital alone is more than the total number of doctors in some states. We have close to 600 doctors on our payroll because we have the hospital management board, teaching hospital and primary healthcare centres. We are still trying to employ more.

Funding

There has been prudent management of resources in this ministry. Since we started the programmes six years ago, there has not been any need for us to say that we want to increase our budget even though people from other states have been coming to our hospitals to enjoy our free healthcare programmes. The hospital management board in the state takes a budget close to N600 million for the payment of staff salaries on a monthly basis. It is burdensome because many state governments went into it but quickly withdrew but we thank God that we have continued to sustain the various free health care programmes.

National Mirror