By Olayinka Ajayi

The founding Director, Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre, WARDC, Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi has said there’s urgent need to bring the issue of maternal mortality to the front burner of government.

Fielding questions from Newsmen during a two days workshop on ‘Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights in Nigeria’
Akiyode-Afolabi noted that Nigeria is second to India in high maternal mortality globally.

She said, “To ensure women are not dying as a result of unsafe abortion, we need to increase family planning around the country, there’s need to collaborate to further strengthen advocacy across Nigeria.
“Sexual and reproductive right in containing the issue of unsafe abortion in Nigeria.It is important for government to invest money. It is also important for government to take the issue of unsafe abortion seriously because of the high rate of people dying because of that.
“So steps needs to be taken to address this problem through legal and policy reforms . Some States like Anambra, Ogun, Jigawa, Osun, Gombe, have taken steps already. It is important that Nigerians should see it as a national emergency to address the high rate of national mortality among teenagers and adolescent . It is not something that the government should look away. Nigeria is next to India in high rate of maternal mortalities. Lot of effort has been made but we are still not there at all.

On his part the Secretary general of the Society of gynecologist in Nigeria Professor Azubuike Oyebuchi in his keynotes speech added that there’s urgent need to ensure that maternal mortality is reduced in Nigeria.

“Our abortion laws in Nigeria are a bit restricted even to those who are raped or who had incest, In most States today, you don’t have the right to terminate such pregnancy. The right to pregnancy is only for the sake of saving the woman’s life.
In other words, the law should be liberalize a little bit more for those that were raped or those that had incest so that medical practitioners can safely be allowed to safely terminate a pregnancy within the law . If we don’t do so abortion would go underground and we have lots of quarks that does unsafe abortion that could increase maternal mortality and other complications. These are issues that needs to be pushed if we are seriously about reducing maternal mortality in Nigeria. There’s need for the government to increase funding to healthcare. Recommendations about 15% of the budget should be implemented to health and also be accounted for if we want achieve a lot more as a nation.”