Sola Ogundipe
31 July 2007
analysis
Lagos — IN December 2004, during the 14th Global Alliance for Vaccine Initiative (GAVI) Board Meeting in Abuja, Dr. Jane Schaller, then Executive Director of the International Paediatric Association (IPA), while recommending the professor (then Dr. Grange) for the NGO seat on the GAVI Board, presented her (Grange) to Dr. Tore Godal, GAVI's Executive Director, as "someone with wide experience in child health, primary care paediatrics, public health, teaching and training as a university professor, and in working with UNICEF and WHO in Nigeria."
Schaller further disclosed that the nominee had extensive contacts with NGOs, child health systems of other African countries and other IPA countries and was well placed to make a major contribution to the GAVI Board, and to GAVI programmes, and to be a fine representative of NGOs while providing valuable representation from Africa to the GAVI Board.
Responding to a question on the state of health of children in Nigeria, Prof. Grange was once quoted thus: "Development is stagnant. We are not only suffering from brain drain but poor infrastructures. Nigeria is one of the highest rated in infant mortality in the world and it is certainly the highest in the African Region. It is rated as the sixth highest in the world.
"Therefore, looking at Nigeria's status, it is out of place with this kind of picture. Nigeria has more resources that can cope with this burden. It is a question of priority. Nigeria has to set priority in such way as to yield to the first burden, most urgent health problems. Even though Nigeria is currently going along that way, we are quite too slow. We have to hurry and catch up with the rest of the world."
The expectation now is that with the professor in the driving seat, Nigeria, at long last, may begin to hope for actualisation of international legal standards for the protection and well-being of children, such as the 1990 World Summit for Children which created the Goals for Child Survival, Protection and Development, the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
As President of an Association that works to mobilize its extensive network of paediatricians for advocacy and programmes in child health, Grange is positioned to enable her country benefit from the level of consultation and assistance in child health from all countries of the world.
Take for instance, the six key programme areas targeted by the IPA between 2001 and 2004. These were Child Health in Sub-Saharan Africa, Childhood Tuberculosis, Children's Environmental Health, Child Health in Humanitarian Emergency, Essential Medicines for Children, and Universal Immunization.
Others included HIV & Aids, Newborn Survival, and Quality of Care. These are all programmatic areas in which Nigeria currently needs a lifeline.
Fully aware of the inherent potential of initiatives such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the promise they hold for improvement of global, and by proxy, national child health, the new Minister cannot but enable Nigeria identify and tackle issues affecting problems of immunisation of children, moreso, through access to a readymade network of educated professionals concerned with child health in nearly all of the countries of the world.
In several other ways has the appointment of Prof. Grange as Minister of Health been widely applauded as probably the best thing to happen to the nation's much troubled health sector in a long while. Indeed, such excitement has not been witnessed since the appointment of predecessors in the person of Late Prof. Olukoye Ransome Kuti.
The Minister's passion for the welfare of children is legendary and it is no gainsaying that she is more than adept in advancing equity in national development towards a reduction in the nation's childhood morbidity and mortality.
Having served on so many committees with specific focus on women and children, and being the maternal and child health advisor to the Federal Ministry of Health, the Minister is very much aware that the provision of health, education and other basic social services for all is not only a compelling moral concern, but essentially a requisite for national economic growth.
For so long has there been the urge to gravitate towards improving immunizations, adolescent health, newborn survival and a general improvement in the areas of partnership and advocacy, policy and standard-setting. There may be no better time than now to achieve these objectives.
Once again, hopes are rekindled that Nigeria's health and development agenda will be placed on the highest pedestal of priorities. Perhaps more importantly, expectations of the average Nigerian are such that the national health agenda will become child right-focused, more developmental oriented and repositioned to encourage collaboration among a broad range of partners.
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