The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA) recently launched a five-year strategic plan to improve this country’s health sector. The plan, launched on Tuesday April 18, 2007 brought together civil society organizations and other medical associations to parley and advance the sector. Among those at the meeting to finalize the NMA Strategic Plan 2017-2022 were development partners.
NOT everyone thinks birth control is a blessing. Boko Haram, a jihadist group that terrorises north-eastern Nigeria, deems artificial contraception to be a product of infidel learning, and therefore forbidden. Its ideologues also believe that females should avoid school, marry early (sometimes while still children) and have lots of babies. In the dwindling areas the jihadists control, women have no choice.
Aisha Suleiman, 32, had just been delivered of her seventh child. She has a history of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) where she suffers uncontrolled bleeding after each of her pregnancies. This time, it took three pints of blood to stabilise her.
In its effort to bring healthcare awareness to the grassroots, Federation of Muslim Women's Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN), has partnered with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), and religious leaders of the Muslim community on issues of child and family health.
This is not your typical captivating news story. If it were, you would see gruesome imagery of Amidu Subair, 4, in painted words. You will see his sunken eyes, scaly skin and parched lips. You will see his distended belly strain with ribs that cut through it, like tyre tracks on Borno’s dirt roads.
President of the Association for Reproductive and Family Health, Professor Oladapo Ladipo says the number of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth complications every year in Nigeria is "one of the greatest injustices of our time."
"It is shameful that Nigeria still contributes significantly to global maternal death figure. We estimate that we are losing about 58,000 mothers annually, through pregnancy, childbirth and post-partum complications," Ladipo said.
Imagine, the traumatic torture of pregnant women who daily see, hear of the deaths of a fellow pregnant women dying from complications relating to pregnancy and child births.
Unfortunately, Nigeria with over 160 million people contributes 10 percent of the world annual maternal death. The figure stands at 52,000 deaths per annum from complications relating to pregnancy and child births, this is alarming.
The Federal Government through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has rolled out four new strategies to boost polio eradication drive, strengthen routine immunization and ensure revitalization of primary health care centres in the country.
The attitude of some husbands in Bauchi state constituted a threat to the well-being of their pregnant wives more than other challenges, the Executive Chairman, Bauchi State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (BSPHCDA), Mr Adamu Gamawa said on Tuesday.
Briefing newsmen in Bauchi on the Maternal Newborn and Child Health Week (MNCHW), Gamawa said such husbands had prevented their pregnant wives from attending antenatal clinics (ANC).
Worried by the increasing incidence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which is also known as female circumcision in Nigeria, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has called for an end to the harmful and barbaric practice.
