As part of the activities lined up for a three-day working visit of the Rotary International president, Gordon Mclnally to Nigeria, Rotary Nigeria over the weekend, engaged stakeholders on maternal and child health.
The event, which was held on Saturday evening at Rotary Centre, Abuja, had Mclnally, his wife, Heather, and other notable members of Rotary Nigeria in attendance.
Speaking, the Country Representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Nigeria, Dr. Walter Kazadi Mulombo, lamented that investment in primary health care was not encouraging, and called for the community’s engagement to tackle the diseases.
Represented by Mr. Martins Joseph, Mulombo said: “In this primary care, which is the treatment of the common diseases in communities as possible, but it also means the public health interventions. So the issues have to do with disease prevention, promotion, and early detection and response to emergencies.
“That is part of the primary healthcare we are talking about and engaging with the communities is an aspect of primary healthcare that we encourage.
“There are several aspects that we talked about when you’re talking about achieving those goals. One of them is about insurance coverage. How are we ensuring that we are targeting the vulnerable, those who cannot pay that premium to be covered?
“How are we targeting, and ensuring that those who are receiving the right health care that’s the essence of getting communities are identified? That is one of the things that we want to emphasise ’’.
Also, the UNICEF representative in Nigeria, Martin Dohlsten, who collaborated with Mulombo’s position, said UNICEF was determined to reach out to zero children on polio immunization.
To this end, Dohlsten disclosed that UNICEF had reached out to about 500 Zero children with integrated polio immunisation.
He said: “As of last year, we managed to support and reach over 500 Zero children with integrated polio immunization services. And if we want to tackle these issues, we need a perspective which is broader than the health care system or health sector, we need to engage our sector, and we need a multi-sector model in terms of education and nutrition’’.
On his part, the Provost, College of Medicine, Federal University of Health Sciences, Otukpo, Benue State, Professor Oladapo Sunday Shittu, who noted that this year marks the 30th year that Rotary Nigeria started the maternal and child health engagements, identified ignorance and poverty as part of factors responsible for the prevalence of the maternal and child health challenges.
