BY VICTORIA OJEME & REGINA OKPOTA

ABUJA – Due to the rising number of Nigerian women who die during child births gyneacologists in the country have asked for the adoption of maternal death review and family planning as a means to curb the growing epidemic.

The president-elect of Society of Gynecologists and Obstetrics of Nigeria, SOGON, Dr. Fred Achem, made this position known during a workshop on advocacy and policy influencing, in collaboration with International Federation of Gynaecologists, FIGO.

He also canvassed what he called “No-Blame System” where deaths of mothers will not be blamed on any one, but made case for proper investigation to be undertaken to determine the cause of death in order to forestall further recurrence in addition to meeting the unmet needs of family planning in the country to cut down on internal death of mothers as against what was obtainable in countries practicing family planning.

According to him “maternal death review is a system, it’s a no- blame system whereby any mother that dies in any part of the country is looked into with the view to identify why that woman died and if it is preventable, why it was not prevented with the view to making sure that kind of death does not happen again”.

He said, in addition, “We want to ensure that there’s an increasing uptake of contraceptive practice in Nigeria . Countries that have increased contraceptive uptake have reduced their maternal mortality.

“We are talking about termination of pregnancy as a major cause of death, if we meet the unmet need of family planning in this country, we will not be talking . if everybody whom needs family planning gets it that is if you don’t get pregnant, you don’t get into miscarriage so we want to use family planning as a positive way”

He explained that in order to aid this implementation, “we want to advocate that federal government and state government and local government, faith based organizations everywhere we can to make sure that family planning is readily available so that those unmet needs of family planning are met with”

Meanwhile,Dr. Achem expressed concern over the limited number of skill birth attendants and the inadequacies underlying health care delivery in the country as well as the conjectory nature of the national health bill he however,displayed optimism that the passage of the bill will address the shortcomings trailing the health sector

According to him, that bill has the potential of doing so much for the health sector. It has met stiff opposition from all corners even within government and outside government, within the health care industry. I think it is undergoing restructuring, we hope that we will use this advocacy to get to the details and find our selves where we can begin to influence change in that direction”

The chief facilator, Jonathan Ellis, urged participants to activate their burning desire for change, have a focus and remain persistent while presenting them with 5 elements which includes: lobbying, media, public mobilisation, allies and research while encouraging them to Touch, Enthuse and ACT, TEA.

In his words,” it is not all about awareness or education but practicing change. It is about doing things differently, about learning from our actions to know what to do differently next time”