By; Matthew Ukachunwa, Lagos.
Lagos State Government is set to begin the first round of year 2016 Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) programme with a vow to comprehensively implement the policy to its logical conclusion.
“We’ll intensify efforts to implement our maternal and child reduction strategies,” Dr. Olufemi Onanuga, the Special Adviser to the State governor on Primary Healthcare, assured.
According to him, maternal, pre-natal, and child (under-5 year) health indices have emerged as the most important health indices that determine national and global well-being.
Onanuga announced that the 2013 National Demographic Survey, “which is our national indices for neonatal, infant, under-5 children and mothers are far from cheering.”
The special adviser pointed out that the 2013 national maternity mortality rates of 576/100,000 live births compared with the 2010 data of 545/100,000 live births “is an indication that everyone has to up our antic concerning maternal and child health interventions”.
Moreover, he expressed support for the Integrated Maternal Newborn and Child Health Strategy adopted by Nigeria as a panacea to tackle issues of maternal and child mortality.
The MNCH Week is scheduled to hold from Monday 13th to Friday 17th June 2016.
“A wide range of high impact and low cost package of protective, preventive and promotive services will be to the whole family during the week in an integrated manner,” Onanuga said.
These services include routine immunization, Vitamin B supplementation, growth monitoring and promotion, screening for malnutrition and appropriate counseling and referral, administration of de-worming medicine, and distribution of informative, educative and communicative materials, the special adviser on health disclosed.
In addition, he stated that tetanus toxoid will be given to all women of child-bearing age; also counseling will be provided on breastfeeding, hand-washing, oral rehydration therapy as well as home management for fever and diarrhea and family planning services.
