Maternal Mortality: Widows, Divorcees train in birth attendant in Kaduna State

By; AMOS TAUNA, Kaduna.
The Director Womenhood School of Health Science, Kaduna, Hajiya Maryam Abubakar, said in an effort to reduce maternal mortality, they have trained over 300 women mostly widows and divorcees in various ways of helping women in rural communities  through childbirth.
Hajiya Maryam said the one year training of Train Birth Attendant (TBA), of 322 women in Kaduna State was free, adding that most women selected for the programmed were mostly from the rural areas from the 23 local government areas in the state.
Abubakar explained that it was part of effort in strengthening Corporate Social Responsibility to women in the communities in order to enhance free treatment on anti-natal services to all pregnant women in all the 23 local government areas in the state.
For the past three years, she said, the school had been rendering many services to women and children living closer to the school environment as well as organizing campaign against Polio and other six child killer diseases.
Hajiya Maryan said throught this effort,”We can reduce the rate of women and children dying daily in our villages due to the shortage of medical personnel in both rural and urban cities across the country.”
 
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended that one doctor should attend to not more than 600 patients but the ratio in Nigeria is one Doctor to about 4,000 patients with the ratio even worst with Nurses.
 
“When you work out the ratio, you now know why Nurses are always badly painted in public hospitals because they are not enough and therefore overworked,” she said.
The Directors of the school said, “We trained these women professionally for them to be able to meet the present challenges in the rural areas and send them back to their remote communities, hoping that this will help in tackling minor health challenges in the state.”
Fatima Sa’id, one of the beneficiaries of the programme, said that she received one year training for free on ‘Train Birth Attendant’ at the school and expressed her readiness to put in practice what she has learnt.
Fatima added, “We live in a very far village from the town of Kaduna, and every day I have to spend huge amount of money to go and come back through the use of local boat and canoe to cross a river to go to school. Thank God I am through and it is time totouch the lives of women in the rural areas that are passing through difficulties for lack of medical personnel.”