Paediatricians Task Media On Child Mortality

The Annual and Scientific Conference of the Paediatric Association of Nigeria (PAN) ended in Abuja on Friday with a call on the media to play up the issue of child mortality.

The President of the association, Dr Dorothy Esangbedo, told newsmen that the media had a part to play in ensuring the reduction of child mortality in the country.

“A lot of children die because their caregivers are uninformed.  I think that the media needs to work closely with health professionals to provide such information,” she said.

She said that the conference exceeded all expectations following the huge attendance.

The conference was designed to bring to light issues of child morbidity and mortality, because Nigeria has one of the worst figures in the world.

Esangbedo added that more than 200 more people than anticipated showed up for the conference, adding that the hall was always at capacity or overflowing.

“I think that the government needs to tap into the enthusiasm of the paediatricians to solve the situation of the children of this country,” she said.

 ”We had participants from the United States, the United Kingdom and other European nations. That is not to mention the participants from other countries in West Africa, East Africa and South Africa,” she said.

The conference highlighted the challenges faced by health professionals from the inequality in access to health supplies and the inequality in the spread of health professionals across the country, she said.

The theme of the weeklong conference was the “prospects and challenges in accelerating reduction of newborn and child mortality in Nigeria’’.

The issue of children with special needs was a subtheme, according to Esangbedo, and some children with special needs could be raised to be productive members of society if they get the right kind of care.

The other subthemes were ‘partnership in achieving child related MDGs’ and ‘the role of immunisation in reducing communicable disease burden’.

Representatives from UNICEF, WHO and Save the Children, a non-governmental organisation, participated in the conference.