Development
Communications Network recently organized a documentary screening on maternal
and child health. The gathering which was an interactive session between the
media and key civil society organisations in Lagos State aimed at
previewing an innovative approach to public education on the needless deaths of
women in pregnancy and childbirth. Success Damian reports.
Previewing
Maternal Newborn Child Health (MNCH) documentary which held at Devcoms office
in Surulere, Lagos was an eye opener for the public to be aware of the numerous
challenges militating against adequate healthcare for pregnant mothers in
Nigeria.
Bolaji
Adepegba, a Consultant to Devecoms on Training and Communication, said that the
documentary screened was about the needless death of pregnant women in Nigeria.
Put together
by some civil society organisations in Nigeria, the campaign against maternal
and child death was done through Not Again Campaign.
Adepegba
stated that “The essence of the campaign was to step up the advocacy against
the death of mothers in Nigeria titled Not Again because Nigeria is posting a
very high statistics as far as the death of pregnant mothers are concerned, so we want to highlight some
of the issues involved. It exposes some of the lapses, lapses on the side of
the population, especially our health seeking habits, lapses on the side of the
system which has to do with how much resources is deployed.”
He said part
of the challenges discovered during the documentary include Poverty which makes
it difficult for people to access health facilities. He also said Ignorance
also make people not to know what they are supposed to do, “We also have bad
governance, and that is why we had to bring the experiences of women who had
near fatal experiences, so that they could tell the world about their
experiences,” Adepegba stated.
“So from
what they are saying you could see where they themselves went wrong and where
the system went wrong, so it helps everybody to know the way to go so that our
women need not to die needlessly.
Speaking on
the way forward, Adepegba reiterated that “The way forward is for the Population
to know what to do, go seek help as early as possible, and for the government
to fashion ways through which people can access some of this facilities, at
minimum cost and you could see that we highlighted the issue of health
insurance. The whole process of health insurance is that we will not all be
seek at the same time, but we will all be paying periodically our premiums, so
there is so there is going to be a pool of resources, to help those that fall
sick at intervals and when it is my turn to fall sick, other people will take
care of my health bills. And I don’t see this as rocket science, it can be as
everybody paying as little as N100 every month depending on the level of care
that you hope to seek.
“On every
body’s part we all have a role to play either as health seekers, health care
providers, and that is the reason we put together this documentary,” Adepegba
said.
Akiloluwa
Akinpelumi, Head of programmes, Development Communications Network said the
video for not again campaign against the death of women and children, is to
show the reality of what an everyday woman faces when it comes to child
bearing, and their experiences when they go for antenatal cares. “And also to
show to us that our public hospitals, a lot of times you find out that facilities
are not available.
He said with
the documentary, as stakeholders, individuals, organisations, need to continue
to push for the end to the endless death of women and children, because whether
we like it or not these are leaders who are going to take over from whoever is
the leader right now, because they are also a generation to be reckoned with
and so, if we preserve their lives, we never can tell this is the next set of
generation that will turn the nation for good.”
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