The Federal Government of Nigeria in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) has inaugurated a Maternal and Perinatal Health Database Committee. The Committee would monitor and generate data from 48 tertiary institutions on the causes of infant and maternal mortality in the country.
Speaking at the event in Abuja, Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, represented by the Director, Family Health, Dr Adebimpe Adebiyi, informed that the Committee’s main focus was to Strengthen Maternal and Perinatal Health Database for improving Quality of Care during Childbirth (MPHD-4-QED).
Prof. Adewole noted that inauguration of the Committee was an important milestone in health systems strengthening and medical death audit to ensure rapid reduction of maternal and perinatal mortality.
The Minister further said that the database to be used was designed to capture the death of mothers or babies as well as the causes of such deaths. “We do not just want to know the number, we also want to know the causes of the deaths, to enable us take measures to avoid and prevent such occurrences in the future’’
He added that the database would fast-track reduction of infant and maternal mortality rate and strengthens the Nigerian health system, by improving maternal and perinatal health.
The Minister stressed that it would provide a mechanism for making recommendations for the reduction of maternal and perinatal mortality. This, according to him, would speed up action by the Federal Ministry of Health to promptly respond to Maternal, Newborn and Child Health programming in Nigeria, for the attainment of the SDGs three and five.
Adewole lauded the World Health Organization for the tremendous work done over the years towards improving Maternal and Child Health by giving direction through focused interventions in Nigeria which culminated in the inauguration.
In his welcome address, the Permanent Secretary, Health, Mr. Abdulaziz Mashi Abdullahi, who was represented by Dr. Bose Adeniran, Department of Family Health, said that Quality of Care, focusing on both the provision of clinical care and the experience of care by beneficiaries within a strengthened health system, had been identified as the gap in the provision of quality of care services in line with the World Health Organisation (WHO) framework on Quality of Care for Mothers and Newborn.
In his Goodwill message, the WHO, Officer in Charge, Nigeria, Dr. Clement Peters, said that the system would generate a database that would be used to address the immediate and remote causes of infant and maternal mortality in the hospitals.
He explained further that the data would be generated from 48 tertiary health facilities across the six geopolitical zones of the country and it would be expanded gradually to cover the whole country. It would also assist those working in the facilities to do simple analysis that would be linked with data analysis tools, Dr. Peters, added.