ACEPHAP to Partner with Jigawa State on Maternal Health and Nutrition
Arrangements have been concluded for collaboration between the African Centre of Excellence for Population Health and Policy (ACEPHAP), BUK and the Jigawa State Government on maternal, child health and nutrition.
Already, Governor Mohammed Badaru Abubakar has given his blessings and requested ACEPHAP team to work closely with officials of the state Ministry of Health to develop a workable MoU within the next two weeks to seal the collaboration. The Governor described the proposed collaboration as wonderful and highly beneficial to the people of the Stateand added that government would do everything humanly possible to make it work.
Alhaji Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, who spoke during a meeting with the ACEPHAPteam at his Kano residence on Sunday 13 February, 2022 informed the guests that his administration had invested a lot in maternal health and nutrition. He said government had realized that there were linkages between poor nutrition and maternal, infant and child morbidities and mortalities.
He said apart from the free maternal health services to pregnant and nursing mothers, government had also introduced N5, 000 monthly allowances to pregnant women from poor and vulnerable background to address the issue of poor nutrition. He said 24 hospitals across the state local governments have been selected for the programme.
The governor also revealed that government had introduced free transport for emergency cases of pregnant women in labour, saying that government appointed community leaders of health “Jagakdiyan Lafiya” to among other activities coordinate the emergency transport programme by ensuring early and prompt transport of pregnant women with complicated labour cases.
He said these measures taken by government had gone a long way to improve immunization exercises in the State and raise immunization figure from 7 percent to 90 percent. It has also made significant reduction to the unacceptable maternal, infant and child mortality. Alhaji Badaru said his administration welcomed the idea of collaboration and assured the ACEPHAP team of
Government willingness to partner with the Centre to train Doctors, Nurses, Midwives and community health officers to improve quality of care.
Earlier, the Director of ACEPHAP, Professor Hadiza Shehu Galadanci had told the Governor that the team was in his residence to discuss possible areas of collaboration with the State Government on maternal, child health and nutrition.
She told the Governor that the Centre is currently serving as one of the African Centres of Excellence on health related issues, adding that BUK has two of such Centres; Centre for Dryland Agriculture (CDA) and ACEPHAP.
She said the Centre attained African Centre of Excellence status after participating in a rigorous and competitive bidding and won a World Bank grant of 6 million dollars to conduct research on health issues and train human resource on health through postgraduate training and short courses.
She said the centre at the moment runs five postgraduate programmes and has about 30 regional students from 10 African countries.
Professor Galadanci said there is the need for a Memorandum of Understanding with the State
Government, adding that some of the major maternal health challenges in the State are eclampsia, postpartum haemorrhage, anaemia in pregnancy and obstructed labour which she said could be tackled through availability of trained health care providers and provision of emergency obstetric care services. 'We are here to collaborate with Jigawa to increase the capacity of your health care providers to ensure they provide quality emergency obstetric care services through training. For this, there is the need to sign MoU to give official backing to the
collaboration,' she remarked.
She assured the Governor that her team would work assiduously in the next one week to produce a draft MoU and forward it to the government for vetting.
