A daily plane crash with no black boxes found-save us!

Would it be a global concern if an A330-200 airplane with 225 paying passengers flying across the Pacific crashed every single day? Well according to the report, titled: ‘Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2020’ which was done by the United Nations Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter­ Agency Group (MMEIG) – comprising WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank Group and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (UNDESA/Population Division), and covers the period 2000-2020. Celades explained that maternal deaths in Nigeria translated to 225 deaths from maternal mortality every day, saying that it showed that the number of women dying from pregnancy-related causes was very high in the country. “Pregnancy is not a disease. It should not lead to deaths. Every maternal death should be regarded as an abnormality”-Premium times. Despite having one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world, many cases of women dying during childbirth in Nigeria are still unreported-Nigerian Health Watch. “Each maternal death should be counted, and action taken to review or set up systems to make sure no woman dies while giving birth, especially in the communities”-Vivianne Ihekweazu. According to the latest UN global estimates, 303,000 women a year die in childbirth, or as a result of complications arising from pregnancy. This equates to about 830 women dying each day. About two-thirds of all maternal deaths take place in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria and India alone account for one-third of global deaths. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, one in seven global maternal deaths occur in Nigeria. That is more than 50,000 women dying per year in Nigeria. About 95 per cent of deaths during childbirth are preventable.– roughly one every two minutes-https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/429266-despite-having-highest-maternal-mortality-in-africa-nigerias-situation-still-underreported-report.html. We see the discrepancies in data and know for sure that many maternal deaths in Nigeria are underreported. I know this first hand as I share my experience. 10 years ago, after my sister Theodora passed from pregnancy and childbirth complications, my family and I were devastated. It wasn’t the news we were expecting. I had a lot of questions. I wanted answers. So I went back to the hospital months after her death just to be sure of what the doctor wrote as the final cause of her death because while with her in the hospital, her systems were gradually shutting down, first her blood wasn’t clotting, then her kidney’s, then a heart attack. A family doctor had mentioned HELLP syndrome while we were still with her in the ICU but I was curious to know what her death records stated. After going through records with the help of a doctor who worked at the hospital, we couldn’t find her records. He assured me that it would be found, that I need to go home and he promised to look into it and asked me to call back after a week or two. The weeks quickly came by and when I rang him, with sadness in his voice, he said her records couldn’t be found. This news only left a deeper hurt. 10 years later, many government health facilities still manually collect and store records which leaves room for loss of data, omission and mistakes. Accurate maternal mortality figures is a health rights and requires strong in-country data collection, which are largely unavailable in Nigeria, meaning that the number of deaths will be underreported. I know that like me, many families pass through this same situation where records get missing and questions get unanswered only to leave a lingering feeling of sadness. I am able to empathize with women especially those from low income communities who still experience inequalities at all stages of life even in pregnancy and childbirth and I am solving this problem through our Digital Solutions to Check Maternal Outcomes (DISC-MO) project. We see the need for digital inclusion and innovation for vulnerable pregnant women in low income communities thus the need for our Digital Solutions to Check Maternal Outcomes. First we have digitalized the manual collection and recording process and hope to implement in 10 primary healthcare facilities in Abuja Nigeria. This project aims at introducing digital solutions to midwives and healthcare workers in primary healthcare centers in the FCT to optimize their services to pregnant women in communities and also record accurate data.

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