New partnership offers hope for newborns, mothers in Kaduna

From Femi Oyelola Kaduna

The Society of Gynaecology and Obstertics of Nigeria (SOGON) in collaboration with Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health At Scale (Pacfah@Scale) has promised to work with the media and Civil Society Organizations, CSOs, in Kaduna state to improve the health of mothers and newborns especially in area of funding for child spacing.
The Project Director of SOGON-PAS , Dr. Habib Sadauki disclosed this in his remark at a two days coalition meeting with CSOs and media in Kaduna yesterday.
He said the main concern of SOGON PAS projects is concern for the health of mothers and newborns in the country and that is why the project is emphasisimg on how it can advance the health of mothers through child-spacing to check the problems of unplanned and unintended pregnancies.
Dr. Sadauki added that the main step in realising the goals of the group is to form coalitions of like minds CSOs who are drawn from different background on health of mothers and newborns activities.
He further disclosed that the main emphasis in the coalition is to come together to form a Child Spacing coalition, and funding of Child Spacing program in this country.
According to him, over the years, the funding for child spacing is not too impressive and without funds government cannot set up a program that will be there to reach women in the rural areas in particular despite that they are the most vulnerable and are the ones that need the program much more than women who well educated in most cases and know they can take decisions on their own.
“ Our aim is to see how we can work with governments to improve funding of child spacing not only funding, but the release of the fund and it should be done on timely basis and the money should be used appropriately for the purpose it is meant for, ‘we will also be identifying, as part of the objectives influential people in the state who will be our champions, working as influencers when we go to speak to His Excellency, the executive governor of Kaduna state Mallam Nasir El Rufai.
“ We will also be able to monitor our activities in the state in terms of part of recovery plan there will be a budgetary tracking tools and score cards that will be used to assess performance on the budget in terms of the program in the state.
“ We are also working at the national level doing the same thing, replicating exactly what you are doing here in Kaduna at the national level tracking fp budget.” he said.
In her remarks, the Reproductive Health /Family Planning Coordinator Kaduna State Primary Health Care Development Agency Hajia Nafisa Isah said the state will work with SOGON PAS in area of child spacing.