100 women die from pregnancy complications – Consultant

About 100 women were recorded to have died in Zamfara in 2016 due to pregnancy related complications, a medical consultant with the Federal Medical Centre, Gusau, Dr Abubakar Danladi, disclosed.

Danladi disclosed this on Tuesday in his presentation at a one-day meeting of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the media on maternal mortality in the state, organised by the Advocacy Nigeria Network, an NGO.

He said while Nigeria only contributed to about three per cent of the world population of seven billion people, it had remained responsible for most of the health care related burden on the globe.

He also noted that this position was largely attained through the northern part of the country.

He said pregnancy related death cases among Nigerian women had been discovered to be caused by eclampsia and loss of blood.

According to him, there is poor political will on the side of the government to provide standard health care facilities with qualified personnel, drugs and equipment.

He said most of the women, especially at the rural areas, did not get to access services where such issues were being addressed in appreciable level.

He, therefore, urged the CSOs and the media to be more proactive in their activities, to ginger the government to do more in ensuring good health care delivery in the state.

Responding, the chairman of the Correspondents Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in the state, Mr Maiharaji Sala, assured that the media was always ready to carry out its responsibility.

He pointed out that “we cannot, however, create news reports; so all stakeholders should be forthcoming with information whenever the need arises so that we can give the required publicity’’.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that the meeting was attended by 130 persons drawn from the media and the CSOs.