Midwives Help To Reduce Maternal Mortality

             

Wellbeing Foundation Africa (WBFA) is an NGO focused on maternal health. Toyin Saraki is the founder and in this interview with Vanessa Offiong of Daily Trust, She speaks on the primary healthcare and the need for more comprehensive and innovative financing mechanism to improve health.
See excerpt:

What inspired your interest in maternal health?
My interest in maternal health stems from my personal experience of childbirth in Nigeria and loss of a child over 20 years ago. After losing one of my twins, and coming close to death myself, I had to fight to save my life and the life of the surviving twin. My child and I are very lucky to be here today but knowing that this is an all too common experience for mothers and infants around the world is heartbreaking.


Now, I am fighting for every mother and every child around the world through my foundation. Luckily, I am not alone in this fight to improve maternal and child health. We have a number of skilled and dedicated partners who are working tirelessly to improve maternal health and implement respectful maternity care as a global standard. Amongst these partners are midwives, and I'm very pleased to say that I am the inaugural Global Goodwill Ambassador for the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM)
Midwives help to ensure that women of childbearing health are healthy, happy, and able to contribute to their community and economy. They empower women to make life-saving choices for their children at birth, early infanthood and throughout childbirth so that when these babies survive, they grow into healthy children and adults. The empowerment of women at a time when their health is at its most vulnerable is crucial for their future and the future of their children. After all, we know that an empowered woman is a health-seeking woman for herself, her family and her community.

Urban poor women are still quite neglected when it comes to provision of maternal health facilities. What's your take on this?
In Nigeria, we are facing serious challenges regarding the provision of maternal health services and facilities in both urban and rural areas. Financial barriers, scarcity of skilled birth attendants, and lack of awareness about the services that are available to them, have created a situation where 13% of Nigerian women give birth without anyone present - not even a family member.
Much is made of the scarcity of doctors across the African continent but equally worrying is the lack of midwives and their skewed distribution within countries. Low remuneration and poor work conditions have contributed to an exodus of health workers from Nigeria to other countries. Yet, if we were to increase access to midwifery care in urban and rural areas by only 25%, we could reduce maternal mortality rates by 50%. So that must be our primary goal over the coming years.
Access to primary healthcare for urban poor women must also be a priority. Often, women are unable to pay health insurance premiums, which means they are forced to rely on expensive emergency care services.
Out-of-pocket financing at the point of service in hospitals can cripple families financially for years, resulting in further economic vulnerability and limited access to regular primary healthcare, setting off a cycle of poverty and poor health for generations. Affordable health insurance is key to avoiding this situation. It will prepare families for the cost of healthcare, allow families to access regular primary healthcare physicians at a low cost, and encourage healthy home habits. This is why the WBFA initiated the Alaafia Universal Health Coverage Scheme (AUHCS), which will pay the insurance premiums for 4800 people each year

MDGs expire this year. How would you say Nigeria has fared in terms of maternal and child health care issues?
Despite Nigeria's outstanding economic growth since 2000, we still lag far behind the rest of the world in the MDGs. Nigeria accounts for 13% of all global deaths of children aged under 5 and ranks in the bottom ten of all countries in terms of maternal health. Yet, I know that we can achieve progress in maternal and child health. We have the resources and skills but we must channel them in a more coherent, more sustainable way. This will include access to innovative financing for health insurance through initiatives like WBFA's AUHCS, better access to midwives in rural areas, and an emphasis on respectful maternity care within our services. As we move into the Sustainable Development Goals era, I am positive that with the right leadership asking the right questions about how to save the lives of Nigerian women and children, we can accelerate progress on our maternal, newborn and child health indices.