Oyo State government has announced vitamin A supplements and deworming for one million children under the age of five as part of its efforts to optimise maternal and child care in the first round of its five-day Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Week.
Executive Secretary, Oyo State Primary HealthCare Board, Dr Muideen Olatunji, stated this at the flag-off of a 5-day Optimised Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Week at Oranyan Primary Healthcare Centre in Ibadan.
Dr Olatunji stated that this is part of a regular exercise by the Oyo State government to deliver an integrated package of preventive services known to be cost-effective to improve mothers’ and children’s health and survival.
He said that the prevalence of childhood malnutrition with stunting has dropped from 24.4 percent to 23.0 percent, demonstrating the success of the integrated package of preventative services being delivered by the Oyo State administration.
“Optimisation is fundamentally two-fold. One is to make sure that we are focusing on more than just deworming medications or vitamin A therapies. Additionally, we want to highlight the health services that mothers can use and encourage them to return to the medical facilities for these services.
“Also, the exercise is to close the gaps that we’ve seen in these interventions and, leveraging on this opportunity, ensure that many children and mothers benefit from our interventions.
“The packages comprehensively address the main causes of death in pregnant women and children under the age of 5 years. It is necessary to make improvements to the alarmingly high Nigerian health indices, particularly those that impact women and their offspring.
“Nigeria established the MNCH week in response to this situation, with the goal of expanding a suite of critical interventions for maternity, newborn, and child survival that have been shown to lower rates of maternal, neonatal, and infant death.”
Dr Olatunji declared that the interventions are free and safe, urging mothers and caregivers to take their children that are 5 years and younger to the nearest health facility to them to access these interventions.
“It is not restricted to one thing; it encompasses other things like family planning, oral rehydration solution (ORS) and zinc for diarrhoea, intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in pregnancy, and long-lasting insecticidal-treated nets,” he continued.
Dr Omowunmi Okedare, the Deputy Project Director for Solina Health, speaking on behalf of the partners implementing health interventions in Oyo states stated that the benefits of the interventions are tremendous and urged mothers to come out and not deny themselves and their babies’ these benefits.
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