The Nasarawa government says it would domesticate the national guidelines on eradicating maternal and child mortality.

Ibrahim Alhassan, the director of public health, disclosed this at a three-day meeting of stakeholders.

The meeting was organised by Care International, under its project, ”Catalysing Strengthening Policy Action for Healthy Diets and Resilience (CASCADE)”, on Tuesday in Lafia.

Mr Alhassan explained that stakeholders agreed to work with the government during the meeting to domesticate the state’s guidelines.

However, he added that the guidelines would be reviewed to ensure smooth implementation, given the state’s peculiarities.

“These strategies will help us identify deaths of all mothers as a result of pregnancy and children from zero to five years. If we identify the causes of the deaths, we will interrogate the process to ascertain the possible strategies to prevent reoccurrence.

“This intervention is a no blame strategy to identify causes of deaths in order to put up mitigating measures to guard against future occurrence,” Mr Alhassan said.

The director explained that the stakeholders would produce a document addressing the unacceptable maternal and child mortality rate. 

“Healthcare workers as well as other stakeholders will  be on the look out for cases, causes and ways to prevent maternal and child mortality in the state based on the new document,” he said.

Isaac Ishaya-Audu, programme manager of CASCADE, said the move would tackle avoidable deaths. He added that his organisation would continue to complement the efforts of the government and other partners toward ensuring women and children get access to balanced diets with ease.

He promised to ensure a gender transformative approach toward addressing the social norms that deny women free access to quality diets.

“We are also empowering women through nutrition-sensitive agricultural practices to help them take advantage of the local food around them and prepare balanced diets,” he said.

The programme manager explained that the organisation was working in 18 LGAs across Bauchi, Jigawa, Kebbi and Nasarawa.

He added, “We are also working with private service providers engaged by the government to supply nutritional foods to primary school pupils to ensure standard nutritional practices.”

Emmanuel Okpe, the World Health Organization (WHO) surveillance officer, lauded the state government and other partners for accepting the guidelines’ domestication.

He explained that the state would now be better prepared to gather more reliable data that would help them respond promptly to tackle causes of maternal and child mortality in the state.

He pledged that the WHO would continue to support the state in ensuring people get better and affordable healthcare services. 

(NAN)