The National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, says no fewer than 148 Nigerian women die of maternal complications on a daily basis in the country.
The NPHCDA Executive Director, Dr. Faisal Shuaibu, made the disclosure on Tuesday during an interactive session with journalists in Abuja.
According to him, most of these women are poor and vulnerable, hence the need for concerted efforts towards reducing maternal and child deaths by 50% by 2021.
He, therefore, called on the Federal and State Governments and donor agencies to support the agency in its quest to ensure that no woman or child dies from preventable causes.
According to him, such could be achieved through the recruitment, training and retraining of skilled birth attendants at designated health facilities.
Mr Shuaibu also expressed his delight over the recent certifying of Nigeria as a Polio-free country, describing the development as unprecedented.
He, therefore, declared that all efforts would now be geared towards sustaining and leveraging the gains made from polio eradication.
DAILY NIGERIAN reports that Africa Regional Certification Commission, ARCC, had on August 25, 2020, certified Nigeria as Wild Polio Free, after almost 3 decades of battling with the virus.
Speaking on efforts to improve immunization coverage, Mr Shuaibu said the NPHCDA has started implementing innovative strategies – modified Integrated Medical Outreach Programme (mI – MOP) to reach unvaccinated/missed children amidst COVID-19.
According to him, the initiative will improve immunization and primary health care service delivery in targeted 409 low performing local government areas of the country.
On COVID-19 pandemic, the director-general said the NPHCDA had set up command center sat national and state levels to work collaboratively with National Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, and other partner agencies to manage and respond to the pandemic.
Mr Shuaibu added that the agency had facilitated training of over 220,000 healthcare workers and community volunteers at national and subnational levels on best practices during routine operations and service delivery.
“The NPHCDA supported the procurement and distribution of PPE to health care workers to ensure their safety during the training and immediate routine operations and service delivery
“NPHCDA, working with the development partners, will be rolling innovative strategies and plans to continue and optimize PHC services during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he disclosed.
