This year’s World Health Day was marked globally with a year-long campaign on enhancing maternal and newborn health. The campaign aptly titled ‘Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures,’ urges governments and the health community to “ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and to prioritize women’s longer-term health and wellbeing.”
For Nigeria to be part of the global effort to improve maternal and newborn health, it must work hard to reduce the rate of its maternal and newborn deaths said to be on the rise. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Nigeria accounts for over 34 per cent of global maternal deaths. This is among the worst in the world. Available statistics from the global health body show that close to 300,000 women lose their life due to pregnancy or childbirth each year, while over 2 million babies die in their first month of life and around 2 million more are stillborn.
The world body says that based on current trends, a staggering 4 out of 5 countries are off track to meet targets for improving maternal survival by 2030. Unfortunately, one in 3 will fail to meet targets for reducing newborn deaths. Sadly, Nigeria is not yet free from this scourge.
According to factsheet on maternal mortality by the World Health organization (WHO), everyday in 2023, over 700 women died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. A maternal death occurred almost every two minutes in 2023. Between 2000 and 2023, the maternal mortality ratio (MMR, number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) dropped by about 40 per cent worldwide. Just over 90 per cent of all maternal deaths occurred in low- and middle –income countries in 2023.
Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that African region had made some limited progress in lowering maternal mortality since 2000, it nonetheless said that the region needs to increase 12-fold its annual reduction to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of fewer than 70 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030. According to the acting WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, despite a 40 per cent decline in maternal mortality, from 727 to 442 deaths per 100,000 live births between 2000 and 2023, the region still accounted for 70 per cent of global maternal deaths.
An estimated 178,000 mothers and one million newborns die in African region—many from preventable causes. Ihekweazu said: “At the current annual reduction rate of 2.2 per cent between 2000 and 2023, the region is projected to have nearly 350 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030, five times higher than the SGD target of fewer than 70 deaths.”
For Nigeria and other African countries, there is a lot of work to be done to reduce the region’s rising maternal and newborn deaths. Apart from massive enlightenment campaigns to enhance maternal and child health, these countries should build new hospitals to ensure that mothers and children have access to adequate healthcare system. We urge the federal and state governments to prioritise women’s longer-term wellbeing as well as those of the children.
The government should make intentional investments that will improve the health of women and babies. Government should encourage collective action to support parents as well as health professionals who provide critical care. Above all, the government should provide useful health information relating to pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal period.
On account of the brain drain in the nation’s health sector, the federal and state governments must increase efforts to train more doctors, nurses and midwives and put adequate measures in place to retain some of them. The reported shortage of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals will likely worsen our maternal and child health. Let the government step up efforts to build more primary health care facilities in all the 774 local government areas as part of the measures to improve the healthcare needs of all Nigerians, including mothers and children.
We also commend the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, for donating N1billion in support of the federal government’s fight against cervical cancer. Senator Tinubu made the donation when she played host to a delegation of the National Taskforce on Cervical Cancer Elimination led by the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Salako, at the State House, Abuja. Therefore, we call on other Nigerians to support the government’s plans to improve maternal and child health. We cannot achieve the much-needed socio-economic development without adequate provision for maternal and child health. Therefore, the government must prioritize the maternal and newborn health.