Wellbeing Foundation Africa is committed to maternal and newborn deaths reduction –Fasehun

Dr. Luther-King Fasehun, Nigeria Country Director of Wellbeing Foundation Africa, an NGO founded by Mrs. Toyin Saraki, in this interview with ODIMMEGWA JOHN PETER, highlights the activities of the Foundation in promoting healthcare for pregnant women and children.

Wellbeing Foundation Africa has been known for laudable activities, what is the main focus the Foundation Africa?
The Wellbeing Foundation Africa is a non-governmental organization (NGO) founded over 12 years ago by Mrs. Toyin Saraki. Our main areas of work are the entire Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) continuum of care as well as ending gender based violence, discrimination and abuse. We are also involved in philanthropy, education, and the socio-economic empowerment of women and families. Our work is mainly through advocacy but we also do important work in terms of project implementation. We are working on training midwives and other healthcare workers to better deliver healthcare for our mothers and children. We also give out pregnancy school education for antenatal and postnatal care; this is our MamaCare project, and it has had a massive impact in Abuja, Lagos State and Kwara State. We are also involved in the social impact sector through client-held personal records and Clean Delivery kits a.k.a Mamakits. Healthcare support and empowerment for the vulnerable are our main focus.

Mrs. Saraki has remained focused and ceaselessly committed to her Foundation, a pet project she developed as a First Lady, what has been her driving force?
One of the driving forces of Her Excellency is her personal passion. She sees it as a personal calling to humanity. Secondly, she is very aware; she is very learned; she is not a medical doctor, but you will be amazed by how much she knows. She is very aware of the science; she is very aware of the evidence; she is a listed author in The Lancet series. She is very much aware of the science, of the facts, of the data. She believes that if that knowledge can be shared across board, people will not need to suffer. Mrs. Saraki is poised to get that information out there, so that not just women, but their husbands, fathers, brothers and community leaders will be aware that for a woman to have a baby, and for all risks to be mitigated, these are things that need to be put in place. We have that knowledge and she wants to make sure that the Foundation gets that knowledge out to the world. Again, she is very innovative; she wants to do new things; and she wants to do old things in new ways. She wants to learn, so, that keeps her going.

What actions has the Foundation taken towards reducing child and maternal mortality?
We are members of the United Nations Every Woman Every Child (EWEC) initiative. We are one of the first in the world to launch a national EWEC platform in the era of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). EWEC is an initiative of the United Nations’ Secretary-General to reduce maternal and child mortality and morbidity. We do advocacy for improving maternal and child health not just in Nigeria, and sub-Saharan Africa but around the world. We have also been involved in projects that directly have been shown to reduce maternal and newborn mortality. We have a project with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) being funded by Johnson and Johnson to improve the availability and quality of maternal and new born care in Kwara State and the north central zone. This is a project that trains midwives, other healthcare workers, including obstetricians and gynecologists and community health workers on how to better manage women who are pregnant or women who have just had a baby. It has been shown that during the first phase of our project, in the initial 18 months’ period, there was no maternal or newborn deaths. Across nine healthcare facilities in three local government areas (LGAs), there was not a single death or complication. So, that shows to the world that success is possible if we put in the right resources and the right efforts. This was very impressive because the donors decided to give us more funding to carry on this project till 2018, thereby expanding our work to more local government areas. Also, we are involved in project called the MamaCare Pregnancy Schools, that go into facilities with our midwives and we talk to pregnant women as well as new mothers on how to manage their pre-delivery and post-delivery. We have shown that people who come for our classes have good deliveries. We have also revolutionized interactive social media, through the innovative #MaternalMonday that takes maternal health discussions to the mainstream, every Monday. So, these are the things we are doing.

Mrs. Saraki was recently invited to the United States by President Barak Obama and his wife for a White House Summit on Global Development; how has that Summit impacted on the Foundation’s activities?
The Summit was convened by the White House on behalf of the United States Government as well as agencies of the Government like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United States PEPFAR Programme. Every organization working in the field of health, education, agriculture – the entire development spectrum – every such organization that is being funded by the U.S. Government, were co-conveners of that Summit. Yes, Her Excellency, Mrs. Toyin Saraki, was there; also present was Mr. Stephen Sobhani, the Global Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Wellbeing Foundation Africa. Coming back from that Summit, it what we do in Nigeria affects enlightened us that what we do in one part of Nigeria affects other parts of Nigeria and other parts of the world. So, from that Summit, there was a new re-awakening of the idea of our need to think globally and act locally. This has helped us, as we go on into this year’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), and other projects we are doing in Nigeria, to understand that the world is watching and we continue to expect and also make sure that we implement global standards on all our projects, like we have always been doing for the past 12 years. So, the Summit was a validation of our work in maternal and child health, civil registration and vital statistics, community engagements and financial inclusion for mothers.

What are the joint efforts between the Wellbeing Foundation Africa and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine?
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) is one of the first schools of tropical medicine in the world. They have been at the forefront of fighting malaria and other tropical disease for over a century. They have a project that they do around the world, which is improving the quality, access and the availability of maternal and newborn healthcare; we also call it the emergency obstetrics and newborn care (EmONC) programme. The Johnson and Johnson Corporate Citizenship Trust is funding this project in Kwara, starting initially with three Local Government Areas (LGAs), now extending to an extra four LGAs, till 2018. We work in these areas; work in the School of Midwifery; we train healthcare workers, and we train fully licensed midwives, as well as pre-service student-midwives. We also left skills labs behind which have designated rooms for the safe keeping of materials used by midwives and other health workers to train other sets of healthcare workers in a “training of the trainers” model. It was just getting the right people in a room together and getting the training sessions done; ensuring that some standards were kept and mannequins were provided and then facilitators train other trainers. Then, the training continues because the skills lab is there. We are seeing progress; the women are happy; the midwives are happy; the heads of the hospitals and health care facilities are excited, and they are grateful for the work, as well as to Johnson and Johnson, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
In the lead up to UNGA2016, what are Wellbeing Foundation Africa’s plans for engagement of global and national stakeholders for maternal and child health?
One of the key things we want to take to the UNGA, in New York next month, is the importance of midwives and midwifery as very cost-effective, easily available, easily scaled up strategies to improving maternal and newborn health. We want to make sure that midwives are not lost in the narrative, when policies are being made on human resources for health or how to advance or improve health systems. We want to make sure that midwifery is seen as that approach that we can pump our resources into, and pump our time into. Therefore, midwifery is one of the key things we are taking to New York for UNGA. Mrs Saraki is the first-ever Global Goodwill Ambassador for the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM). This is a coalition of midwifery associations from over 100 countries across the world. In that capacity, she has been to several countries in several continents, advocating for midwifery practice and ensuring that midwives get paid good salaries so that they can be better motivated to enjoy their work. Midwives could easily penetrate those areas where maternal mortality rates are high so that they can try and bring them down.
The MamaCare Project has been changing the lives of women and children across Abuja, Lagos and Kwara, can you give us some insights on how it was started and other plans for the future?
The MamaCare Project is a brain child of Mrs. Saraki. In her guidance, we need to use midwives more, in terms of community engagement. MamaCare was started last year; we started with midwives who visit a healthcare facility, familiarize themselves with the stakeholders in that facility, and schedule a regular weekly visit that entails educational classes based on a sound curriculum for ante-natal and post-natal care. The conversations hold between our MamaCare midwives and the expectant and new mothers, as well as between our midwives and the staff of the healthcare facility. Actively, right now, we meet over 1000 women every week, across Lagos, Abuja and Kwara. It is a brilliant project, which we plan to take across Nigeria. In this regard, we are grateful to contributions from Laerdal Global Health, who has recently made a kind contribution to us, in the form of training equipment, such as mannequins and other simulators.