Ondo will achieve MDGs on maternal, child mortality

The Commissioner for Health in Ondo state, Dr. Dayo Adeyanju has given the assurance that by 2015 the state would have been able to achieve a 75 per cent reduction on maternal and child mortality, thereby meeting the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs).

Adeyanju stated this recently in Ondo town while conducting journalists round the ultra-modern Mother and Child Hospital being constructed at the Medical Village in the state.

“In one year(2009 to 2010) of the Abiye(safe motherhood) programme initiated by Dr. Olusegun Mimiko’s administration in collaboration with the World Bank, we have been able to reduce maternal death by 15 per cent and we hope that by 2015 we would have reduced maternal mortality by 75 per cent. We have also reduced
under-five mortality by 26 per cent in one year(2010 to 2011)”, he explained.

He said the Abiye programme was meant to reverse the unacceptable health indices of the state which the World Bank described as the worst in the South-West prior to the Mimiko’s administration.

“We discover that the reason why our women die is because the delivery was not being taken by skilled birth attendants. We actually try to ensure that we get skilled birth attendants to take deliveries and we look at how we can track pregnant women to our health facilities” ,he added.

The 100-bed mother and child hospital according to him was modeled after the one in Akure with the labour room in the hospital expected to cater for eight deliveries at a time. It also have two operational theatres and the intensive care unit.