Agency Blames High Maternal Mortality On Quacks

The National Primary

Health Care
Development Agency (NPHCDA) last Wednesday in Enugu, attributed the high rate
of maternal mortality in Nigeria to the activities of quacks.

The South-East Coordinator of NPHCDA, Dr Damaris Onwuka,
said this at the ongoing Comprehensive Emergency Obstetrics Care workshop and
noted that there were  lots of such
quacks in the medical profession.

At the workshop, organised for medical doctors under the
Midwives Service Scheme (MSS), Onwuka advised women to stop patronising
unskilled midwives.

The coordinator expressed regret that most women, especially
those in the rural areas, continued to patronise unqualified native midwives
and doctors in spite of the presence of hospitals.

“In Nigeria, a woman’s chances of dying from pregnancy and
childbirth remained one in every thirteen, meaning we have the second highest
rate of maternal deaths in the world’’.

She explained that the Federal Government, in its efforts to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5, initiated the MSS in
2009, through the NPHCDA, to address maternal mortality and child morbidity in
Nigeria.

She explained that under the scheme, 400 midwives had been
employed in the South-East zone out of which 80 of them had been deployed to
each state within the zone.

“There are five clusters per state, each of which consists
of four health facilities and four midwives per health facility. “Each cluster
has a referral General Hospital whose medical officers will be retrained and
empowered technically for effective performance, he said.

“Similar training has already been conducted for medical
officers of the first batch of three clusters per state.

“The current training is for medical officers drawn from the
remaining two clusters per state,’’ Onwuka stated.

She also identified delay as the major cause of maternal
mortality in the country and advised pregnant women to visit General Hospitals
always.