Nigeria Maternal and Child Health Overview
Nigeria loses about 145 women daily to preventable pregnancy and delivery complication and 2,300 under-five to preventable childhood illnesses, making Nigeria the number 2 in burden of global maternal and child MMR. This is very worrisome in the sense that these women dying are fellow human, our very own sister, mothers, wives, daughters etc. It’s very painful to see a mother who is making the greatest scarifies of bringing another life to the world die. As a Nurse Midwife in Nigeria, I believe that every little and unrelenting effort that is committed towards improving maternal and child health will certainly save lives. I have lost many relatives, friends to childbirth , My mother almost lost her life giving birth to me, someone saved her life with just the “right information” if not there wouldn’t have been ME or my Mum alive today. I almost lost my life the day I gave birth to my child, someone again saved me, so I am committed to saving lives and ensuring every Nigerian mother and child survives the sacred act of child birth
The burden of maternal and child mortality lies more in the rural communities, were there is little or no help in place when there is complication. Some of our mothers I chat with after delivery would say “ Nomso who have come to water a very dry ground in our community” they call me “mama nomso” I give God the glory for using me and my team as vessel to save lives.
Through TFCH work, we have been very active in identifying harmful cultural practices women are forced to practice during pregnancy and delivery, with strong advocacy and sensitization on its harm and leading to death, I am proud to say we have eradicated most of them and created positive behavior and practices amongst them. We have increased uptake of services and access to quality care at health facilities / communities we work
Projects:
We have done quite a lot but I share few due to time
• The school of husbands- This project is centered on mentoring married men on MNCH we Developed and established participation of husbands at ANC first booking so they can learn more about pregnancy and need to support their wives and new born and also for couple HTC
• On our mhealth project we have been able to reach to five thousand five hundred women who received daily SMS alert in local languages on pregnancy and delivery information danger signs, nutrition, ANC reminders, do’s and don’ts during pregnancy, signs of labor etc
• Trained twenty five (25) TBAs so far on basic ANC care and identification of danger signs and complication/ including quick referral
• Save our mothers project: here we go to communities/ door-to-door to identify pregnant mothers who are not able to register for ANC due to poverty and other cultural reasons. We offer care at home and refer them to the PHC were our organization has already paid for them to receive free continuous ANC services
• 1 kit-saves 2lives project; many mothers give birth at home or patronize the quacks due to poverty too. TFCH produces and provides free clean birth/ new born kit that contain all essential needs during delivery. So far we have produced and supported six thousand women across Nigeria, including the North saving more than twelve thousand lives with our birth kit
• Identification and training of TBAs
• Training of health care workers on MNCH
• Free / mobile ANC in rural communities
• Mhealth- We send weekly SMS to the pregnant mothers in local languages on recorgnising
• Free support services like provision of clean delivery/ new born kit
• PMTCT
• Support for immunizations
• Follow up services and tracking
• Mentoring women during ANC
Recognitions:
Sure, gradually we are gaining recognition, from MHTF, Maternova, WeObservertory , ZMQ, ZMD, Millennia Foundation, connecting Nurses, Sanofi Aventis, FMOH Nigeria, MamaYe , IIE, Women Deliver, Healthy Newborn , IPAS, UNFPA Nigeria, YOUPEDA , IDEAS Nigeria and many more.
The very unique thing about TFCH is that we don’t sit down to wait for funds, as a youth led organization we create innovations that attracts supports within our locality. Majority of projects carried out here in the first 2 years of establishment were all self-funded by me, some I used my school fees, income, donations etc. But there are strong financial track records track records of all activities carried out. TFCH has a good financial policy and also registered with Economic and Financial crime commission Nigeria (EFCC) against money laundry. We keep sustain our projects locally even when project funding finishes or ends. We write proposal, engage in local fund raising and IGAS to keep it running because here we don’t allow efforts to die, we believe sustainability is the key to greater achievement.
Sustainability:
As Nigeria is unlikely to meet up with MDG 4, 5, we already have innovations in place to continue to improve MNCH if MDG funding stops. We are focusing on Family planning, increased access to ante-natal and delivery services / quality of care by skilled health attendants at PHCs. We created the provision of free clean birth/ new born kit which is free to enable our women delivers free at health centers. These two areas I have mentioned require strong attention. Our free birth kits has attracted many mothers to deliver at health centers , saving their lives and giving them opportunity to learn more about family planning and reducing pregnancy by chance and unsafe abortion.
Challenges:
Culture and religion still pose a great challenge, not every religion accept family planning for example, it takes patience and commitment to create an understanding about this. Another limitation is funding, there are innovations that can improve MNCH in Nigeria, but sometimes it goes into wrong channels those who do not even care about if our women are dying or not. It takes determination to keep moving especially being a Nurse. Nurses are generally seen as unable to lead an organization that has been my challenge here in Nigeria even amongst senior colleagues in the Ministry when I need something from them, they would rather frustrate it or categorically tell me they will not help. But I am not discouraged at all it rather keeps me going. I still thank God for the colleagues who has given me all the moral support too.
Motivation:
My motivation to keep working in this field is the lives of mothers and children we save daily, the pregnancy and delivery complications we are preventing, the burden of MMR we are reducing and above all the worrisome reputation we are wiping away from Nigeria on its MMR records. My joy every day is getting good news that our mothers are surviving child birth. The promising future that lies ahead of Nigerian mothers keeps me going too.
It’s a good thing to have more professionals on board to fight this worrisome burden of maternal and infant mortality rate across the globe. More innovations / ideas are required especially from young people who are energetic to make a change we need. So I look forward to meeting more and new maternal health champions and advocate both in Nigeria and across the globe.
First of all we have three offices in Nigeria, central /head office in Abuja, and two regional offices in Kebbi and Imo states. We have full time staff, interns, volunteers and part time staff as well. We also have corps member serving in our organization as well.
As I said earlier Nigeria loses 145 daily to preventable pregnancy and delivery complications and 2,300 under five to childhood illnesses, this makes the country the second largest contributor to the under–five and maternal mortality rate in the world.TFCH is making great impact in Nigeria and also working towards expanding across other African countries especially to support women have a safe birth with our clean delivery /new born kit.
Getting more partnership and support from other international organization, to scale up our activities there is need for funding. For instance the listed innovations like the “School of husbands “project which creates the forum for men to know their roles towards improving maternal and child health. The Clean birth kit project has a target of providing free 50,000 clean delivery/new born kits yearly to support pregnant women in rural communities. All these require funding.
Sepsis and tetanus are among of the leading causes of both maternal and newborn death in Nigeria. These infections occur mainly as a result of contamination from an unclean environment and from harmful delivery practices, including the use of unclean materials during the delivery, Eighty percent of pregnant women in the rural communities attend ante-natal classes and less that Ten percent delivers at the health facility. They prefer the traditional homes due to the very low cost of deliveries which has very poor, dirty and unsafe environment for delivery, giving rise to high infection rate that accounts to 15% of the 145 deaths of women daily. Some healthcare provider in rural are found also to have delivery room that are dusty and dirty, tools are rusty and bloody from the last birth; and there is no way to sanitize hands or instruments.
The Clean Birth Kit
To respond to the above challenges, we began producing the clean delivery/ new born kit (2-in1) lifesaving pack which is a simple approach to reduce this risk. These kits help to provide a clean birthing environment for mothers and newborns who would otherwise be left to go through the birthing process in an unsanitary environment that creates risk of maternal infection at point of delivery .Provision of free clean birth kits to our maternity homes / Primary health facilities provides a safer birth environment and better health outcomes for mothers and babies. It has all needed items for delivery including Misoprostol for mgt of PPH and chlohexidine for cord care. We have a target of producing 50,000 kits yearly. Since March when we unveiled the product we have supported 6,000 women thus saving more than 12,000 lives across Nigeria with more concentration in the North. This project is open for partnership and support, especially organization who would support with the listed items (cord clamp , diapers, razor blades, under sheets, maternity pads, baby receiving cloths, Miso, Chlx, mucus extractor, gauze , cotton wool, hand sanitizers, hand gloves etc. Organizations out their can help us reach out our 50,000 target through support and partnerships.
This interview and documentary was given by the Founder of Traffina Foundation, if you need to get in touch with this Foundation and learning more about their work click here
This post is part of Nurses Round Obligation of profiling exceptional nurses work globally, you can post us your work to (nursesround@gmail.com), it could be the next.
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