By Chinelo Obogo
Maternal and Reproductive Health (MRH) Research Collective, has launched a marathon in its campaign to reverse the high maternal mortality rate in Nigeria.
Its founder, Prof. Bosede Afolabi, who spoke during the marathon in Lagos, said the event was to create awareness on the high rate of maternal mortality in Nigeria and said her organisation’s plan to assist 5,000 vulnerable pregnant women that can’t afford safe delivery in the communities.
Afolabi, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, said the marathon is a culmination of a one-month long programme to raise awareness and raise funds to reduce the high rate of maternal mortality in Nigeria. She said Nigeria has the highest number of pregnant women dying from pregnancy and child birth in the whole world.
“In 2020, about 82,000 Nigerian women died during pregnancy and child birth. It is about three times more than the figure in India and India is about five times our population. If India could reduce theirs, it is important for us to reduce our own. In the high income countries, the total number of women dying of pregnancy and child birth is usually less than 10 sometimes or less than 20 in one year, but for us 82,000 is too much.
“This campaign is one to actually let people know so that people can be aware and people can be more helpful to pregnant women and let pregnant women know that they should go to hospital to deliver. We are sensitising pregnant women on why they shouldn’t stay at home when they are pregnant and also shouldn’t go to somebody that is not skilled. This is because it is those giving birth under people that are not skilled that are mostly affected. So a lot of women would deliver normally without a problem, but the ones that would have a problem, there is no way you can know. If a woman suddenly delivers at “Aunty Nurse’s place” or “Alagbo’s place” and she starts bleeding, there is nothing you can do, you know unlike a hospital where you know what we can do.
“We have begun registering pregnant women for this programme and already, we registered 300 even before the beginning of this campaign, and we are going on.
We’ve employed community health workers to help register them, follow them up, ensure they deliver and follow them up after delivery so that they can be safe and so that their children can be safe too.
“A lot of the Primary Health Centres are signed up, but on our website if you just go to the contact on our website, you would see where to go. We have a digital registry called ‘MamaBase’ which is used to collate the data of pregnant women in Lagos State, starting at the primary health level, to facilitate the subsequent monitoring of the women from point of engagement till delivery. Through evidence-based research and work with other stakeholders to address these challenges, this initiative will help generate insights and data to provide solutions to the gaps in effective healthcare delivery at this critical tier of care.
“We are also going to other states for this awareness programme absolutely. My life mission is to reduce maternal mortality in Nigeria, I am tired, we are all tired. We’ve been saying the same thing for decades, it’s time to actually start doing something active about it,” she said.
Chief Executive Officer of Sterling One Foundation, Olapeji Ibekwe, said the foundation is partnering with MRH Research Collective to reduce the maternal mortality rate in the country.