Wellbeing Foundation Africa calls for collaboration to promote gender equality, reduce maternal mortality

Wellbeing Foundation Africa, a non-governmental organisation (NGOs) has called for collaboration between community NGOs and policy makers to promote midwives as the heart of health solutions to maternal mortality.
The group made the call at an event to mark the 2020 International Women’s Day celebration, held at the British Deputy High Commissioner’s residence in Lagos.

In her keynote, foundation’s Vice President and renowned public health physician on maternal and child health, Dr. Alero Roberts said despite the fact that July 2020 makes it 25 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, real change has been agonisingly slow for the majority of women and girls worldwide.

“Today, not a single country can claim to have achieved gender equality. Multiple obstacles remain unchanged in law and in culture. As a result, women remain undervalued, they continue to work more, earn less, have fewer choices and experience multiple forms of violence at home and in public spaces,” she said.

Roberts said that the foundation, which is a global partner to the UN Secretary General’s ‘Every Women, Every Child’ initiative, focuses on SDG 3 (wellbeing for all) and 5 (gender equality), putting women and children at the core of everything they do and driving positive change in the realms of maternal health, women’s rights and girls’ education through a multi-layered strategy of research, advocacy, policy development, and educational programming.

While noting that the nation suffer some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world accounting for 14 per cent of global maternal mortality, the physician said that of the 6.2 million pregnant women in the country, 476,923 die due to pregnancy or childbirth-related causes, majority of which are preventable. She said this mean one in every thirteen women die as a result of maternal complications.

Roberts said although there are arrays of economic, gender and social factors which prevent the necessary education to unite mothers and midwives as the first line of defence against maternal mortality, the foundation is still committed to educating women on their health and training midwives and community health workers in emergency obstetrics and newborn care.

“We know that a midwife trained to global standard has the essential skills to prevent 83 per cent of all maternal deaths, stillbirths and newborn deaths and a 25 per cent increase in midwives could reduce maternal mortality by 50 per cent. For that reason much of our work centres on increasing the skills training for midwives and advocating for the increased coverage of midwives across the world.

“It is not acceptable that in societies like Nigeria, only the wealthy, metropolitan women are educated enough to understand the necessity of respectful maternity care. The experience of bringing life into the world need not be traumatic. It need not be dangerous. It should be dignified and accessible,” Roberts said.