Laraba MUREY
The Nigeria Association of Women Journalists, NAWOJ, in partnership with Women Voices in Health, has called on the Federal Government and policy makers to address lingering challenges of women reproductive health.
NAWOJ made the call during a press conference organised to amplify advocacy efforts for strengthening women’s healthcare delivery services in the country.
Speaking at the event, President of NAWOJ, Ladi Bala, said it was time for the media to drive home the conversation and mobilize critical stakeholders to give priority to women’s health issues and begin to respond to them early enough.
According to Bala, the media should begin setting an agenda for the incoming government on May 29 to ensure the need to factor these issues as they plan their policies and program for the next four years.and particularly those that affect women’s reproductive health.
“There are concerns about the health of the children, the state of our health facilities. Deplorable health facilities lack medicine, medicine and other equipment women bear the most burden in the society and their health is mostly at risk,” she said.
The NAWOJ president charged journalists to create information based content that elicit positive response.
“Let it not be our routine way of reporting. But let’s raise some questions. Let’s begin to ask and make demands on behalf of the Nigerian people, that critical steps, and critical policies that need to be put in place are implemented,” she said.
Also speaking, the Country Director of Pathfinder International, Dr. Amina Aminu Dorayi, said “Women’s Health is actually in a state of emergency because every 10 minutes, many women die in our health facilities, in our communities, because they either do not have access to skilled care at birth, or they are not able to pay for the skilled care at birth.
“In Nigeria, we have over 46 million women of reproductive age, but Nigeria accounts for more than 25 percent of global maternal deaths. It means that one in four that is a quarter of all maternal deaths in the whole world come from Nigeria, so we contribute to this huge burden of maternal deaths.”
“The social determinants of maternal health are strongly connected with the patriarchal nature of our society.
We still have early marriage, in addition to teenage pregnancies, low level of education, poor health and nutritional status, inadequate access to sexual and reproductive health and skilled attendance at birth.”
On her part, Co-Founder of International Society of Media and Public Health, Moji Makanjuola, said “if women are aware, you can only pay 15,000 naira. A year to be able to access quality healthcare. More women can come together with the wives of the FCT traditional rulers and make themselves a cluster of the small And if you don’t make demands, they will not take care of us.”
“There must be a deliberate task to include Nigerian women in elective offices. if we look back at the statistics of women that have been affected, our young girls that have been affected by insurgency in the North East and anywhere else the woman bares the face of the war’ There need to be security in health.”