Niger State sets new target to improve quality healthcare

*Employs more midwives

Doosuur Iwambe, Abuja

In its bid to boost its health workforce and scale-up efforts towards delivery of quality healthcare for pregnant women and mothers, Niger state government has employed more Midwives.

This follows the demand for more and skilled midwives to take deliveries and provide respectful care to pregnant women and new mothers in the recently launched What Women Want Campaign of White Ribbon Alliance.

In April 2018, White Ribbon Alliance (WRA) launched the What Women Want campaign. It began with a simple idea: ask those who most use maternal and reproductive health services to tell us what they most need.

Nearly 1.2 million women and adolescent girls from 114 countries participated in the campaign. Approximately, 80,000 of these responses came from Nigeria, a huge percentage from Niger State.

The responses were aggregated, and the top 10 tasks were unveiled as the What Women Want campaign results.

The results were clear: women clearly articulated what they wanted. The third demand was more and better-supported midwives, interesting though, all the top 10 demands border around having qualified health care providers, quite a number further specified midwives, as having qualified midwives will make it possible to achieve those demands.

WRA Nigeria also conducted a What Midwives Want assessment in primary health care facilities in Niger State to understand why women and girls demand better midwives.

Reacting to the data, the Deputy Governor of Niger State, represented by the Hon Commissioner for Information and strategy Hon Mohammad Jani Idris stated that the government is ready to employ more midwives; this follows the approval of a provision to recruit more Midwives in the State’s 2021 budget.

The Commissioner who spoke at the commemoration of 2021 International Day of the midwives, 2021 which had in attendance State Health actors, Niger State Chapter of National Association of Nurses and Midwives, White ribbon Alliance and partners emphasized the important role of Midwives in saving lives, especially pregnant women, and mothers during childbirth.

Also speaking, the house committee chairman on health, Niger State House of Assembly, applauded the WRA Nigeria for the impressive work done in the What Women Want campaign.

He submitted that the data and stories presented will aid his work as a legislator. He committed that the issues raised will be presented before the House of Assembly and improved decisions will be made in collaboration with the Niger State Ministry of Health.

The chairperson national association of nurses and midwives Niger State chapter, Comrade Anna Simone highlighted the need for the government to ensure the commitment translates to action.

Niger State has a total number of 2,003 Primary Health Care, less than 200 of these facilities have a midwife.

The state currently has a total of 347 midwives as of January 2021, out of which 283 are employed by saving one million lives (SOML) programme.

With SOML coming to an end, the State has only 64 midwives to attend to 1,435,010 women of childbearing age.