Mrs Nonye Soludo is the wife of Anambra State governor and founder of Healthy Living with Nonye Soludo. In this report by SADE OGUNTOLA, she explains why healthy living should be the norm for Nigerians, arrangements put in place in Anambra State for better health for all, among others.
WHAT is the pet project, ‘Healthy living with Nonye Soludo’ all about?
I will not call ‘Healthy Living with Nonye Soludo’ a pet project; I don’t really believe in having a pet project that you fly with when you are in office. Healthy living is my life; ‘Healthy living with Nonye Soludo’ is something I started 18 years ago. So, healthy living is a principle I live by. I was once living a very unhealthy life; I wasn’t very particular about what I ate. I wasn’t too health-conscious. About 20 years ago, I was on the big side — not that every big person is unhealthy. I was busy and not living healthy and it was affecting my health. I was always sick, having heartburn and so on until I changed my lifestyle. Then I started cutting down on processed food and eating natural food, and things started changing. So it became a passion. So I started teaching people how to live a very healthy life. A healthy lifestyle is what we all really need. Poor lifestyles are a threat and a big problem in our society; many people are not aware that the things they are doing are killing them.
Aside from eating natural foods, what other things are people supposed to do for healthy living?
To maintain healthy living, number one is your nutrition. You must look into what you eat; a whole lot of rubbish is out there that people eat, including fizzy drinks and packaged foods with hundreds of ingredients. We don’t know what they are; we just consume them. So, it is important to read the labels of packages before buying them. The best is to go for natural foods, the way God created them. Staying hydrated is required. Exercise is very important; take out 30 minutes for exercising in a day, which is just two percent of our day. If you do that, your whole day will be very productive. There are quite a lot of benefits to exercising.
Are there things you highlight as part of a healthy lifestyle that women particularly should imbibe?
As women, we are wonderful creatures. We are very busy and always have a lot on our plate, including taking care of our husbands, children, family and in-laws. Regardless, we must also take care of ourselves. I always tell women we must be selfish and selfless for us to be able to help others. We must create that me-time. We need it to take care of ourselves. You can’t pour from an empty cup. You must be healthy to take care of others.
I always encourage mothers to take care of what they eat, have their mealtime and then go to bed at fixed time. When they set things up like this, they should tell their children so they can support them in maintaining such schedules. Like me, I told my children at the beginning of January that 10:00 p.m. would be my bedtime. On a day, they met me in the dining room working at around 10.30 p.m. They reminded me of my bedtime. Even when I asked that I be allowed to work for extra minutes, they said no, reminding me that the work can wait. They said that was what I told them to do. That’s how I closed my laptop and woke up early in the morning to continue the work. That is watching out for Mummy. So, it is always good to involve them. As mothers, we must be very intentional when it comes to our health and healthy living.
What have been your contributions to healthy mothers and citizens of Anambra State?
When we came in, like my husband, Professor Chukwuma Soludu, will always say, this mandate is one with a deadline. I also ran with this belief from day one, so we really try to do a lot for mothers. For me, malaria is a big problem, so working with the Malaria Consortium, we gave out 3.8 million free insecticidal-treated mosquito nets to families in Anambra State. We’re going around checking whether they’re using it. We are seeing the result because the number of malaria cases has really dropped, families are now sleeping under these nets.
Last year, with the help of our international partners, almost 15,000 women were screened for cervical cancer. We treated the ones that tested positive for HPV, the germ that causes cervical cancer. Currently, courtesy of Governor Soludo, delivery is free in Anambra State. This includes delivery by caesarean section. Everything is free. The other day, two women had multiple births; one gave birth to three babies and the other to quadruplets through a caesarean section. The quadruplets were taken to the intensive care unit of the General Hospital in Amagu. They spent a lot of time there.
The mother initially didn’t believe that caesarean delivery would be free, so she went to a local birth attendant. It would have cost between N6 and N7 million if she were to pay because of the complications she had and because the babies were born premature. But she and her babies went home without paying a dime. I even send food and money to them to help. Since we started it, over 300,000 people have given birth, with no fatalities.
Severe blood loss is a reason many women die in childbirth. Last year, we gave out 125 anti-shock garments to general and mission hospitals across the state. Anti-shock garment can help keep a woman with severe bleeding and shock after childbirth alive for up to 48 hours by reducing blood loss and stabilising the woman until treatment is available. Without it, she may bleed out within 30 minutes and die.
In addition, we set up what is called Pad-banks in every secondary school. The girls may have menstrual emergencies in school. This could impart their ability to learn the whole day when it occurs. Once the schools run low, they let us know so that we can top up their stock.
So, healthy living with Nonye Soludo, working with the government ministries in the state and in collaboration with many organisations, including UNICEF, CHAN and WHO, is very intentional in all that is done.
What are your plans to ensure healthy living and its crusader become the norm in the community?
We started this over a year ago. The consciousness of the need for a healthy life is already going around like wildfire in Anambra State. We have set it up in secondary schools as school clubs, launched it in all primary schools, set it up in local governments for our youths and, just last week, we made the councillors our ambassadors to the 326 wards to take this to the grassroots, because a healthy nation needs healthy people, and we need everyone to be healthy.
People are really appreciating it, and there are testimonies to this every day on how it has changed their lives. One thing about healthy living is that eating and living right can reverse many chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes that you can’t cure with medicine.
Agriculture is back in both primary and secondary schools; at the end of every term, the best three schools will be given prizes. Also, we are promoting backyard gardening to sustain a good diet. If you pick garden eggs, okro and different vegetables from the backyard farm, there wouldn’t be any need to go and buy such things in the market.
What other health challenges are you tackling to further increase life expectancy in Anambra State?
Quite a lot, the healthy living with Nonye Soludo actually has six pillars. We have nutrition, exercise, personal and environmental hygiene, mental health, emergency basic life support and reproductive health. And following these six pillars, I don’t see how life expectancy will not jump up. That’s one of the reasons I am pushing for healthy living because people are dying from many preventable causes. So we are just educating them to eat as close to nature as possible, to care for their personal hygiene, physical environment, and mental health, to exercise daily for at least 30 minutes, and to sleep for at least seven to eight hours. You might walk around looking healthy, but your cholesterol, blood pressure and even blood sugar might be very high, even though there is no symptom. This is bad, as it can kill.
How are you addressing the challenges faced by people with disabilities in accessing healthcare services?
People with disabilities are not left out of our work to ensure everybody imbibes a healthy living culture. Last year, we launched a white cane campaign. Many people don’t know what it is, and when people with white canes are seen, they are not recognised as blind, they use the cane to navigate. All over Anambra State, sign posts have been erected saying that people with white canes should be asked if they need help. Also, I have spoken about having ramps in offices and so on for easy access for them.
Again, in the last employment, I had to call the commissioner for education to please create a special centre to make things easy for them. So we have not left them out and, in years to come, we will still do more for people with disabilities.
What measures are being taken to tackle malnutrition, especially among children and vulnerable populations, considering Nigeria’s present economy?
That is a big problem everywhere. Mr Governor is really doing a lot. Apart from free delivery and free antenatal care, education is also free in Anambra State. All these are to help the parents indirectly use that money, which they would have used to pay school fees and so on, to augment the cost of feeding. Our team will soon launch a liquid supplement called kwashpap. Like Tom Brown, which is a mixture of soyabeans, maize and so on, kwashpap is to be given to vulnerable children and pregnant women to revitalise them. Our goal is to help people; that is what we live for.
At the expiration of your tenure, what impact would you want Healthy living with Nonye Soludo to have achieved?
Coming into an office, like my husband loves to say, is a mandate with a deadline. It is like going into an examination hall. Once you get the question paper, you read the questions and, because you know them, you run with them. That is what we are doing. We want to be scored excellently at the end of the day; that is what we are working on. So, we want a better health index, longevity, for older people to live well, fewer cases of malaria and fewer women dying during childbirth. It is less than two years. You won’t believe what we’ve been able to achieve. We are just starting, but we know our people will be happy at the end of it all.
Read Also: Insecurity: FCT minister, Police commissioner meet senators
