1Kingsley Joshua
ABUJA : As Nigeria joins the rest of the world in observing “World Breast Feeding Day” marked from August 1 to 7, the Rotary Club in Abuja has said this year’s outing will be focused on maternal and child health.
President of the club in the FCT, Rotarian Frederick Odika explained that this global focus inspired over ten districts to the Kuje General Hospital.
Bemoaning the growing cases of Hepatitis among men (reason for adding its treatment and care in this year’s activities) Rotarian Odika said: “This week, during the first of August to the seventh, it will be a breastfeeding week. So all these are all captured under Maternal and Child Health Disease Prevention under one of the areas of focus of Rotary international.
“So, it’s all about protecting our mothers, protecting the children who are actually our future and that is the main reason we are here at Kuje General Hospital to do the needful; to educate the women; the pregnant women and also distribute all the kits that we have brought.
“The Rotary District 9127 has the ‘Need Assessment Team’ in place to determine, how, where and the health priority before they move into action, noting that the event took place in Kuje based on the report by the team.
“It’s based on this assessment. So, we have a project team from the ESCO and representing the Rotarians in the FCT and in fact in the district, district 9127.
“So, they went out, did the NIST assessment and discovered that we have to start here. It doesn’t mean because we are in contingent hospitals, so they will not reach out to other general hospitals. So, that’s why we are here today.”
Focusing on maternal and child health, the Rotary Clubs in Abuja on Friday celebrated its global project with Kuje General Hospital as location for beneficiary mothers who turned out in their numbers to get delivery kits and training on weaning of nursing babies.
Speaking on the projects, Rotarian Tunmise Adepoju from Lugbe FHA, who is the project Chairman for unite residents disclosed that the Clubs have five projects in one which they believed would impact on lives of babies and that of their mothers at the pre and post delivery times.
He said: “We have about five projects in one for today. Normally, in Rotary all over the world, the month of July is a month of maternal and child health.
So we carry out projects all over the place to touch lives in communities in the area of their major needs. So we have found Kuje General Hospital as one of the places where we can make impact. We want to give them birthing kits for the kind of women that are about to deliver.
“We want to also give the nursing mothers mosquito nets so that it will prevent a lot of disease and fever. We want to also do a weaning program for the nursing mothers so that they will be able to know how to wean the nursing babies after six months.
And then we also want to give them some packs that they can be using. First delivery kits, they can be using after delivery.
“And then we also notice that most times we neglect the fathers. and so we want to also carry out some tests on hepatitis for the fathers and then if there’s anyone found, positive we can quickly take it over before it affects the whole family and we also discovered during our new assessment that some of them cannot afford to pay their hospital bill who about to deliver.”
According to him, the Rotary decided to pay hospital bills for pre and post-delivery of babies given the high cost of medical care in the country, noting that some fathers are going through a lot to the point that it becomes pretty difficult to raise money for hospital bills.
He added: “So we also offer to pay some of the hospital bills particularly for the pregnant women and even the ones that just deliver and then the baby is having complications, jaundice or something, we also want to make sure and show that they are all well treated as you can see during the program you will discover that there are people that you know they are really in need.
“We have different districts across the country, but we are under District 9127 and like I said this month of July is a month of Maternal and child health and that is why we are doing projects on maternal and child health and you see that most of our beneficiaries are mother and their babies.”
The media had earlier reported that technical partners were engaged in training pregnant women on pregnant health related issues, choice of food during and after delivery as well as exclusive breastfeeding of babies after delivery.
Among the items distributed include, mosquito nets, birthing kits, payment of hospital bills, incubator, weaning items and medical test worth millions of naira.
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