40% of pregnant women in Gombe deliver in hospitals, up from 17%, says Project Manager

October 16, 2012 16:22

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40% of pregnant women in Gombe deliver in hospitals, up from 17%, says Project Manager

NAN-HG-6

Delivery

Gombe, Oct 16, 2012 (NAN) The Society for Family Health says the percentage of pregnant women in Gombe State who now deliver in health facilities increases from 17 per cent to 40 per cent in the state.

 

Mr Abare Galadima, Project Manager of the organisation in the state, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Gombe on Tuesday.

 

Galadima said that the increase was a result of intensive education given to the women on the dangers of delivering their babies at homes.

 

He said that the project started in 2010 with the introduction of Traditional Birth Attendants and volunteers to educate pregnant mothers on the health implication of delivering babies at homes.

 

He said the project was initially designed for a two-year period, adding that it recorded great success at the expiration of the period.

 

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‘’When we started the project, we had what we called a base line research and the result of the research revealed that only 17 per cent of women delivered babies at health facilities in the state.

 

“But after the project, we can confidently say we have almost 35 to 40 per cent of women coming to deliver at the health facilities from our research.

 

“We can also confidently tell you that ,the antenatal was around 35 per cent when we started, but we can say up to 68 per cent of women are coming for antenatal now in most of our health centres.”

 

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He said the project had really impacted positively on the lives of women in Gombe, particularly those in the rural areas.

 

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“We have achieved that by enlightening the women on the danger of delivering their babies at home because of the danger that they will encounter during deliveries; and we have also enlighten them to bring their children immediately to the health centres after delivery.

 

“Even if the child is not born in the hospital, it will be examined by skilled health provider so as to confirm whether the child is healthy or there are things the mother needs to do; and also the issue of immunisation of BCG and others.”

 

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According to him, after the two-year project, the organisation has also approved an additional four-year period for a similar project which would be extended to Adamawa State.

 

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 “Last time as we rightly mentioned, we had a project for two years and this time around it is going to be four years.

 

“It is not only in Gombe State but we are going to extend it to Adamawa State whereby we will impact on the lives of pregnant mothers and new born babies; we want to have healthy babies for our generation.“

 

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He said the agency had trained 315 traditional birth attendants in the last two years, adding that the beneficiaries would in turn train 1,160 others in 10 out of the 11 local government areas of the state.

 

Galadima said that Gombe Local Government Area was excluded because it had good number of health facilities. (NAN)

HUL/IH/MSAD

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