No fewer than 1000 health workers ranging from doctors, nurses and community health workers have benefitted from the emergency obstetrics and Newborn care (EMONC) training organised by Johnson and Johnson(JnJ), the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the wellbeing foundation Africa (WBFA).

Speaking at the training of Improving the availability and quality of maternal and Newborn care in Kwara state, Nigeria,  the senior technical officer maternal and newborn health, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine center for maternal and newborn health LSTM.

Dr. Hauwa Mohammed said ” The statistics of maternal mortality rate is not good the statistics are the same women still die in the community women that attended  antenatal Care are very high but when it come to delivery only few, less than ten percent that attended antenatal Care that come out deliver which mean they are delivering somewhere else the maternal mortality ratio in Nigeria is still high and we have a lot of work to do.

“Now there is a lot of improvement, we still need to continue with education as some still trust traditional attendant. We have set up quality improvement theme especially in the primary health care, we try to get somebody in the community like the community leader, to be part of the theme so that they would take the news back to the community. On the things responsible for low turn out of women in delivery she “said many factors resulted to the low turn out but we have introduce respectful maternity care  concept.

“You know if a woman deliver with a traditional birth attendant her mother will come in, she will be there robbing her back her husband will be allowed in,  there is no space and is just a small place but with respectful maternity care concept people know you can not allow companion during a labour and she can assume any position she want to deliver but with traditional birth attendant you can deliver squatting down, you can sit down you can stand up you can do whatever you want and that is part of respectful mortality care as long as there is no complication the woman has no problem women can have support during labour delivery and choose the position they want to deliver I’m sure with that it will improve.” She said.

Speaking further, the national program lead of wellbeing foundation Dr Otun Adewale noted that health workers that are managing mothers and baby are well trained and given the required skills they are likely to deliver better.

“This is the first time we are having such opportunities in Nigeria facilitated by Her Excellency Toyin Ojora-Saraki in 2015. The program we are doing today is just like a round off of the programmes that  have been on for over 5 years.

“The program has recorded 38 percent reduction in maternal death, pregnancy related issues, we have also trained closed to 1000 health workers across doctors, nurses community health workers we have trained all of them.

“The ripple effect of it is that they would go back to their facilities and train more people on this. The program has also donated ten skills labs for hospital in Kwara state whereby hospital management board can also work on that in training and retraining new recruit and other staff that has not been trained

“Other Ministry of health should key into in training their health workers as a result of brain drained we dont have enough doctors, nurses are going enmarses, when you train the little ones you are rest assured that the little people on ground will be well equipped and they would know what to do at the right time government should  key into it make use of the materials given to them and invest more in training their health workers as it will go a long way to help.” He added.

The Kwara state Commissioner for health noted that training has brought development to health system in the state as the skills acquired is germane given the laudible equipment which would go a long way as the importance would be known   during practical.

Speaking on behalf of the beneficiaries of the training programme, Dr Akorede Kami from general hospital Omu-Aran Irepodun local government area of Kwara state Expressed delight on the programme as they would key into the training programme and train others.