|
|
Nigeria: 'Nigeria's Maternal Mortality Too High'
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
Daily Trust (Abuja)
9 July 2008
Posted to the web 9 July 2008
Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar
Yola
The Chairman of the National Population Commission (NPC) Chief Samu'ila Danko Makama, said yesterday that the rate of maternal mortality in Nigeria is too high.
In an address on the World Population Day in Yola, Chief Makama, represented by the Adamawa State director of the commission, Alhaji Magaji Manu Gadam, stated that maternal morbidity and mortality were most commonly associated with high-risk pregnancies and births.
"By current estimates, maternal mortality ratio in Nigeria is between 700 and 800 maternal death per 100,000 live births. This is very high," he said.
The chairman maintained that the problem was partly caused by poor family planning, noting that majority of Nigerians have no access to the full range of safe and reliable family planning methods.
He said the right to plan one's family is a fundamental human right for every adult everywhere in the world.
"Unfortunately, this right has not been realised for majority of our population, especially the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalised and the young.
"The implication of this is that our country is far behind the targets set by the Millennium Development Goals which stipulate that child mortality be reduced by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015," he stated.
He said in terms of contraceptive prevalence rate, Nigeria performed poorly with only 8%, compared to South Africa's 55% or Botswana (39%) or Kenya (32%) or even Ghana (19%).
Chief Makama argued that the use of modern contraceptives to prevent pregnancies would enable the women increase birth intervals and reduce the risk of dying from frequent child birth.
|
"Voluntary family planning has also been known to reduce infant mortality by as much as 20 per cent," he said.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
