NGO Pledges To Improve Women’s Health

A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Centre for Women’s Health and Adlecents’ Development (CWHAD) says its mission is to improve women’s health and mentor adolescents towards a healthy transition to adulthood.

The Executive Director of CWHAD, Mrs Helen Odega who stated this on Monday in Port Harcourt during the first annual maternal health lecture and launching of the unite for Millennium Development Goals 5 campaign, said the organisation could achieve this through capacity building for self sustainability, research and service delivery in sexual and productive health.

Odega noted that the annual maternal health lecture was designed to educate the public about emerging issues in maternal health, provide current information on trending issues to key stakeholders in maternal health, provide an opportunity for networking and create an avenue for interactive sessions with stakeholders in maternal health.

The group which was founded as a club in 2007 was transformed and registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission as an NGO in 2012, has commenced another project with the ??? to contributing to the attainment of the Millennium  Development Goals 5 otherwise known as the MDG 5 through partnership with key stakeholders at all levels in monitoring the implementation of plans and policies put in place for the project.

According to her, “as we count down the last 1,000 days, left to the MDGs deadline, it is our collective responsibility to ensure that Nigeria is not named among the countries that never met the MDG target”.

“The Millennium Development Goal 5 is to improve maternal health, with maternal mortality ratio being key indicator for measuring progress.  At least 5.5 per cent annual decline in maternal mortality is required to achieve the MDG target”, she said.

Odega however said CWHAD has adopted new strategies by creating awareness and partner with key stakeholders in order to achieve her project objectives, stressing that Nigeria maternal mortality ratio stands at 630 deaths per 100,000 live births.

The CWHAD chief executive expressed joy for the support from government, policy makers, civil society organisations and other key stakeholders to ensure that we fast track the attainment of the MDG5 in Rivers State and the country as a whole.

In his presentation, Dr Godson Eze said the National MDG accelerated framework was launched in January 2013 with the aims to identify bottlenecks and double efforts to achieve the MDGs by 2015.