A consultant gynaecologist and obstetrician at Barua Dikko Specialist Hospital, Kaduna State, Dr. Joel Adze has stressed the importance of improving women’s access to safe abortion and post abortion care if maternal deaths and injuries are to be reduced in the state.

Adze who spoke during a five-day Partnership for Transforming Health Systems, PATHS2, supported Post Abortion Care training workshop for nurses and doctors from selected health facilities in Kaduna State, said unsafe abortion contributes to between 13 and 20 per cent of maternal deaths in Nigeria.

Dr. Amina Aminu Dorayi, the Service Quality Improvement and Reproductive Health Advisor with PATHS 2 said unsafe abortion is a critical public health concern causing the deaths of tens of thousands of women worldwide each year.

“Where abortion is restricted or where safe abortion services are costly or hard to find, complications from unsafe abortion are common,” she said

Dorayi said PATHS 2 supports post abortion care trainings designed to make treatment safer and more responsive to the needs of women. She stressed that approximately 59,000 Nigerian women die annually from pregnancy and child birth, and for every maternal death, 30 others suffer long term disabilities. “It is clearly unacceptable that women should die in such high numbers in the process of bringing children into the world” she added.

PATHS 2 is helping to improve the quality of post abortion care services as it is an important, area of reproductive health. Quality post abortion care includes emergency treatment, contraceptive counselling, provision of commodities and supplies, follow up and linkages to other reproductive health services. It believes  all women should have access to safe reproductive health services which includes effective use of modern contraceptive methods.

Dr. Talemoh Wycliffe Dah, a Consultant Gynaecologist and Obstetrician, said that health care workers are critical to addressing the maternal newborn child health challenges at primary health care level, so building the clinical capacity of health workers in competency based training is a key area of intervention.

Dah added that the training was grounded on specific principles of care and also aimed at promoting a woman centered approach to provision of post abortion care services. This means that providers ask for and focus on women’s concerns and interests and take a holistic approach to meeting every woman’s medical and psychological needs at the time of treatment.