The Borno State Commissioner for Health and Human Services, Prof. Baba Mallam, has blamed the rate at which Nigerian women die during childbirth on indecision by most families.
Mallam spoke on Monday, when he received a donation of two tricycle ambulances from an international Non-Governmental Organisation, Doctors Without Borders, in Maiduguri, the state capital.
He said, “There are many reasons Nigerian women are dying at the point of labour. The indecision by the family of the pregnant women during labour has been a major cause of women’s death.
“The indecision comes in because pregnant women are surrounded by families. They tell them, no you can do it.
“Give it a push and from one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, after the woman is exhausted they now say you can go to hospital and there is a problem of transportation, she doesn’t have a car and their neighbours do not have a vehicle and, therefore, this adds to the quagmire.”
Mallam said that available statistics show that 120 Nigerian women die hourly due to delivery-related complications.
According to him, Nigeria is only better than Southern Sudan and Chad in the world, in terms of maternal mortality.
“Nigeria contributes 28.9 per cent of maternal deaths in the world,” he said, adding: “It is important for Nigerians to realise this.
“Despite the fact that Nigeria’s economy is one of the best in Africa, our medical indices are very poor.
“We are 200 million now and by 2050 we will be more than 400 million and that will make Nigeria the third largest country, in terms of population after India and China.
“You can imagine how many pregnant women will be dying. At the moment, every two minutes, the country loses a woman during delivery in Nigeria. So, if we spent 10 minutes here, 20 women would have died,” Mallam lamented.
He advised that it is very important Nigerians take everything necessary to mitigate this carnage of young women.
“This also includes newborns because they also suffer from simple basic problems. As I speak here, children are dying from a blockage of airway to breathing and Nigeria is number three or four in the world, in terms of death of newborns,” Mallam said
He described the donation of the emergency transportation system as very crucial. He said the tricycle ambulances in rural communities of Borno would go a long way in saving the lives of many pregnant women.
He expressed appreciation to the NGO for donating the “innovative tricycle ambulances” to the Borno Government for the enhancement of the transportation of pregnant women from remote villages to nearby medical facilities.
Earlier, a director, Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Africa Stewart said: “We are presenting these two ambulances to the Commissioner for Health, together we have been working on how to do innovative projects so that they can be sustainable.
“We believe that these will do a good job for the human family.”
She said that the NGO had been doing a lot of innovative projects in the state, hoping that the ambulances would serve the purpose for which they were donated.
Stewart said that the organisation was committed to bringing innovative ideas into its projects in the state for sustainability.
She further said that the organisation had observed of late that many projects were unable to survive due to the lack of funds for their sustainability.
She said that the idea of converting tricycle through local fabrication to ambulance was geared toward establishing the concept of sustainability due to its low level of fuel consumption.
Stewart, therefore, called on the government to put necessary measures in place and ensure the ambulances were deployed to where they could serve the purpose they were meant for.
NAN
