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By Haruna Gimba
A season journalist and advocate for Maternal and Child Health, Zainab Umar Ubale has died during child birth Tuesday evening in Kano. She died after a Caesarian Section (CS) at a hospital, leaving behind five children including the new born baby boy.
Zainab who worked with a Kano based private radio station, Rahma Radio, passed away through the cause she is advocating for its improvement over the years.
As a reporter she reported extensively on all aspect of health issues especially on maternal, newborn and child health, child birth spacing, facility delivery, immunization and ante-natal care.
Until her death, she was an active member of various health improvement and advocacy groups in Kano state; the Accountability Mechanism for Maternal and Child Health in Kano State (AMMKaS), and many other health and development journalist groups.
In a tribute, Board of Trustees Chair of Community Health and Research Initiative (CHR), Dr Aminu Magashi Garba, said Zainab will be remembered as someone committed to her job of accurate writing and investigative journalism.
“Through our engagement with her via many trainings that I facilitated and meetings convened by our NGO, CHR, she was dogged, focused on her work.
“She used her radio programmes to report on the plight of women and children especially issues to do with maternal and child death and she also tirelessly advocated for adequate funding for health, access to life saving commodities such as immunisation and drugs. She will be missed dearly. May her soul rest in peace,” Magashi said.
On his part, the State Prograamme Coordinator of The Challenge Initiative, Musa Abdullahi Sufi described Zainab’s death as painful.
“Zainab lost is painful to all advocates of maternal and child health, however as Muslims we believe Allah loves her the most. This is a shocking and big lost, may her gentle soul rest in peace and Jannatul Firdausi be her final home. “This called for Maternal Death Review/Audit to avert similar occurrence in the future,” Sufi added.
