By Ahmad Umar:
In order to reduce maternal mortality, the Gombe State Government, northeast of the country, has taken steps to promote child birth spacing in the State.
To this end, a five day training workshop has been organised for health workers drawn from all the Primary Health Care facilities in the State
It was organized in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Marie Stopes International and the Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN).
The Director, State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Ibrahim Bako said at the workshop that the State Government is focusing on child spacing as a way of tackling the rising maternal mortality rate in the State.
Represented by the Programme Officer, Child Spacing in the Agency, Rejoice Bala, the Director emphasized that the training was intended to reduce the high maternal mortality rate in the State through the application of various child spacing methods by families.
“We want to increase the knowledge of participants who are care givers so that as they go back, they will provide the service to their communities and then maternal mortality rate will be reduced.
“the essence of the programme is also to create awareness to the communities, tell them that providers have been trained with enough facilities so that the people will patronize the facilities for the services.
“Participants are to do a step down training for their colleagues in their various facilities and also create awareness in the communities through advocacy visits to traditional rulers that such services are available in these facilities”, Bako said.
He called on husbands to support their wives to come and patronize these services saying, “At the end, if the women and the children are healthy, the father will be healthy too and the society will be better for it thus reducing our high maternal mortality rate”.
Representatives of Marie Stapes International, Dr. David Adetosin and (PPFN) Comrade Bathsheba Kala, called on the participants to utilize all they would learn in the training for the benefit of their communities and the State at large.
Speaking on behalf of the participants, Runny Yusuf, appreciated the efforts of the State Government in coming up with the training, which she said, was timely.
She expressed the hope that the training would go a long way in helping the Government achieve its aim and assured that they will put to practice what they have learnt so that there will be a complete change in the poor indices of maternal mortality rate of Gombe state.
https://www.africaprimenews.com/2018/06/02/health/nigeria-child-spacing-stakeholders-call-for-creation-of-recurrent-budget-line-to-adequately-fund-programme-in-kaduna-state/