By Asma’u Ahmad
The Federal Government in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday in Abuja, inaugurated the Maternal and Perinatal Health Database Committee.
The committee will monitor and generate data from 48 tertiary institutions on the causes of infant and maternal mortality in the country.
The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, said inauguration of the committee was an important milestone in health systems strengthening and medical death audit, to ensure the rapid reduction of maternal and perinatal mortality.
The minister, who was represented by Dr Adebimpe Adebiyi, Director Family Health at the ministry, said 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,’’ Adewole said.
Prof. Isaac Adewole
The minister added that the database was designed to fast track reduction of infant and maternal mortality rate in Nigeria, adding that it would also strengthen the Nigerian health system, by improving maternal and perinatal health.
It provides a mechanism for making recommendations for the reduction of maternal and perinatal mortality.
The database would also 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.
Dr Clement Peters, Officer in Charge, WHO Nigeria, said 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 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,’’ he said.
