By Abujah Racheal
The Federal Government on Tuesday launched the revised guidelines and tools for Maternal Perinatal and Child Death Surveillance and Response (MPCDSR).
Dr Osagie Ehanire, who is the chairman of the steering committee, also inaugurated a Technical Working Group for the first Bi-Annual Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child Adolescent and Elderly Health plus Nutrition (RMNCAEH+N), multi-stakeholder partnership coordination platform.
The MPDSR is an intervention for improving maternal, perinatal, and neonatal survival is understanding the number and causes of deaths.
Ehanire reinterred the commitment of the Federal Government to improve the maternal, perinatal, neonatal morbidity and to learn lessons that would help the country avert future occurrences.
”The initiative has been expanded to incorporate child mortality audit, making it now MPCDSR.
“The enabling bill has been passed by the National Assembly and is awaiting Presidential assent.
“These developments are what informed the launch today of the revised guidelines and tools for MPCDSR and inauguration of the Steering Committee,” he said.
Members of the committee are Chairman Senate Committee on Health, Chair, House Committee on Health, Commissioners of Health of RMNCAEH+N States, and Heads of Departments of FMoH.
Others are Family Health; Hospital Services; Public Health; Health Planning, Research and Statistics; Food and Drugs Services; and ICT, amongst many other stakeholders,” he said.
He explained that the committee will serve for four years.
The minister said that the committee will also provide oversight on MPCDSR nationwide, support knowledge management, documentation, and research and Give support to the state MPDSR steering committee in the implementation of MPDSR plans and programmes.
Ehanire said that an analysis of bottlenecks indicated a need to examine the coordination architecture at strategic and technical levels and reposition the National Reproductive Health Technical Working Group to address the thematic areas of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights against this backdrop.
He said the ministry was resolute in ensuring that women had a safe pregnancy and delivery services.
“April 11, was set aside as the Global Safe Motherhood Day, so we will use this forum to join in commemorating safe motherhood.
”Safe motherhood arose from the concerted effort of the pregnant woman, her family, the community and health personnel at all levels of care, to ensure the safety of mothers during pregnancy, delivery and afterwards.
“By this definition, all members of society play a role. We know that a major factor in maternal mortality is the delay in reaching a health facility.
“The National Emergency Medical Service and Ambulance System (NEMSAS) will be launched and piloted in FCT, to mitigate barriers and facilitate prompt access for patients in need of urgent medical attention without the demand for payment at the point of care.
“This service will be expanded to other states to make it available to pregnant women in Nigeria,” he said.
He said that one ugly complication from the failure of safety and timely delivery was obstetric fistula, the devastating injury to women, of which up to 90 per cent of deliveries end in stillbirth.
“Nigeria has an estimated prevalence rate of about 150,000 cases with 12,000 new cases recorded yearly.
“At the ministry of health, our key role is the provision of leadership and strategic direction as well as creating enabling environment for the technical delivery of RMNCAEH+N,” he said.
The minister said that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, FMoH has developed several policies and strategic documents to respond to these challenges, however, there would be no noticeable change if these instruments were not adequately disseminated and implemented.
“Given our socio-demographic diversity, some of these policies will also need state-level adaptation.
“I, therefore, give this solemn call to our partners and the leadership of state governments to:
“Give these policies maximum dissemination and visibility.
“Prioritise adaptation and adoption of these policy instruments;
“Aggressively advocate for and promote the implementation of these policies; and
“Monitor implementation of these policies,” he said.
NAN reports that the policy instruments are the National Child Health Policy, 2022 Revision: First published in 2006, Maternal Perinatal and Child Deaths Surveillance and Response (MPCDSR) Guidelines and Toolkits 2022 Revision: First published in 2015.
Others are the National RMNCAEH+N COVID-19 Response Continuity Plan, The National Strategy Plan of Action for Nutrition (NSPAN) 2021-2025 and Media Engagement Strategy for Health Promotion in Nigeria. 2021-2025.
NAN reports that in 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the MDSR guidance is to strengthen notification, review, and response to maternal deaths.
This guide, the WHO said, emphasizes the need for each maternal death to be a notifiable event and reviewed to be able understand the underlying causes to create a response mechanism to avert future deaths; a continuous cycle of surveillance and response. (NAN)
