Person of the Year

We rarely have much to celebrate in the health sector, and broadly this is still the case. The fundamental reform that the sector requires to meet the health needs of the Nigerian people is yet to happen. It requires political courage, not something this government has demonstrated much of. However for the first time in a while, we do have a few successes to celebrate, giving rise to a discussion on whom we should declare our “Person of the Year”.
First, after 10 years of discussion and deliberation, both federal houses of assembly in Nigeria finally passed the National Health Bill and the President signed it into law. We therefore congratulate not only our politicians, but all the Non Governmental Organisations that have for years advocated for a new bill to define the regulation and allocation of resources and responsibilities in the health sector. While the implementation of the new Act will be the responsibility of a new Government, and will be the next challenge; at least now we have a framework. Many heroes and heroines fought for these and we are grateful.
Although we have made little progress in our public health indicators, there have been concerted efforts in this regard. One of the most important indicators of the performance of a country’s health sector is the maternal mortality ratio. Our maternal mortality ratio has barely moved from the from 545 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in the 2008 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS)  to the 576 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births reported in the 2013 Demographic and Health Survey.

SURE-P MCH: Fighting for the Life of every Mother and every Child

Following the feedback from our story on the work of Pro Health International, we realised that very little is known by many Nigerians on what is going on in various parts of the health sector in Nigeria. We will be visiting many of these projects and programmes in the next few months to bring these stories to you and enable you to develop an informed opinion on what is happening and where the deficits are. Two members of our team, Anja Choon and Ada Ezeokoli, visited a SURE-P MCH run primary health centre in Byazhin, Abuja. This is their story …

We recently visited a SURE-P MCH run primary health centre in Byazhin, Abuja. Our guide for the visit was Victoria Akinrolabu, affectionately called Mama SURE-P by her staff and the clients of the health centre. Victoria herself is a nurse and midwife, retired but still active, and one of a cadre of retired midwives brought back to active service to support maternal and child health in Nigeria.
It is no longer a secret that Nigeria has some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world. The most recent figures in the DHS survey in 2013 puts it at 576 deaths per 100,000 births.
The Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) was instituted in 2012 to lessen the impact of the petrol subsidy removal in Nigeria. A subsection of SURE-P is the Maternal and Child Health project (SURE-P MCH), which works towards reducing the maternal and child mortality rates in Nigeria (Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5). In order to achieve that objective, the project supports a selection of 1000 Primary Health Care Centres in all 36 states as well as the FCT Abuja, providing free antenatal care, skilled birth attendance, postnatal care, immunization and family planning counselling. SURE-P MCH is scheduled to run till 2015, concentrating particularly on rural and underserved communities.