Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says Nigeria accounts for 14 percent of the world's maternal death burden due to largely preventable causes, including lack of services that skilled birth attendants could provide.

He said 80 percent of these death burdens occurred at the primary healthcare and community levels.

He spoke in Abuja yesterday while launching the Community-Based Health Research Innovative Training and Services Program (CRISP) of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency.

Represented by the Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen, Osinbajo said: "This clearly justifies the need for urgent actions to be taken to implement the CRISP to address this situation."

According to him, "no matter how much of a masterpiece the architecture of a health facility is or how sophisticated the equipment are, or even the availability of the commodities, a health care delivery system will not function optimally if there are not enough skilled workers."

The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, said Nigeria was facing the challenges of gross inadequacy and inequity in the availability of human resource for health, especially skilled birth attendants.

He said working in primary health care centres had remained unattractive to most of the skilled workers who preferred to provide services in the urban settings.