FASHOLA URGES PREGNANT WOMEN TO MAKE USE OF REGISTERED HEALTH FACILITIES Wife of the Lagos State Governor, Mrs. Abimbola Fashola, has urged all pregnant women in the State to make use of only registered health facilities where qualified doctors and midwives are available to take care of their ante-natal care and delivery needs. Mrs. Fashola, who made this call today at a sensitization and awareness campaign on Maternal and Child Mortality Reduction (MCMR) Programme at Ajeromi-Ifelodun Local Government Area of the State, expressed concern that many pregnant women are still delivering in non-registered facilities which are manned by quacks and unskilled birth attendants. Fashola, who spoke through the wife of the Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Mrs. Azeezat Tijani, noted that many of the pregnant women who patronize such unregistered facilities are at the point of death by the time they are referred to the State’s public secondary health facilities for emergency care. According to her, “many of our women are still delivering in non-registered facilities, which are not managed by professionals and skilled birth attendants largely due to ignorance; and by the time they are referred to our public secondary health facilities, they are moribund”. Fashola stated that the Lagos State Government, through its relevant agencies, has continued with the aggressive monitoring and regulation of the activities of all health care providers to ensure that all illegal operators and quacks are brought to book, stressing that the cooperation of the public is needed to ensure that there is no hiding place for quacks and illegal operators in their various communities. “It is the responsibility of all stakeholders to identify all pregnant women within our communities and ensure they attend antenatal visits regularly and subsequently deliver in registered health facilities”, the wife of the Lagos State Governor said. She noted that the major focus of the maternal and child mortality reduction programme is community awareness and sensitization which is to help ensure that the fundamental message aimed at improving the health of pregnant women in the State get to the community level where majority of the activities of MCMR are implemented. “The need to conduct this sensitization campaign in Ajeromi-Ifelodun Local Government Area is multi-factorial. From the maternal death review conducted for public secondary health facilities in the State, the observation was that there were a high number of avoidable deaths recorded at Ajeromi-Ifelodun as a result of residents’ ignorance, quackery and charlatanism. These deaths should not have occurred”, Mrs. Fashola stated. The Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris, earlier said that the Maternal and Child Mortality Reduction(MCMR)strategies employed by the State Government to address the twin issues of maternal and child deaths in the State are already yielding positive results as evident in some key performance indicator. Idris noted that since the commencement of the MCMR programme over a year ago, there has been positive key indicators that showed that the strategies adopted are yielding positive results as evident in the increase in ante-natal attendance, increase in deliveries, increase in patronage of child survival interventions like immunization against childhood killer diseases and increase in women accessing family planning services. The Commissioner stressed that the design of the strategy was geared towards addressing some delays in seeking assistance and accessing qualitative care for pregnant women and children adding that public enlightenment, infrastructure,quality of care have been identified as areas that needs to be addressed in the MCMR design. He stated that a major thrust of the MCMR strategy is advocacy and public enlightenment and sensitization campaigns which include advocacy and sensitization campaigns at the community level, enlightenment and health promotion activities including running of radio jingles, documentaries, information, education and communication materials on maternal and child health interventions. “One major thing we have done in this regard is to go to different senatorial districts to enlighten the public on this programme and we divided the State into four senatorial districts and we have held four senatorial town hall meetings in Oshodi-Isolo, Ibeju-lekki, Surulere and Amuwo-Odofin for Lagos West 1, Lagos East, Lagos Central and Lagos West 2 senatorial districts respectively”, the Commissioner said.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 07:28:39 +0000
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