Addressing child mortality key in achieving MDG target

… as Massey Street Children Hospital receives a boost from GT Bank

Survival no doubt is the most fundamental law of nature. Indeed where issues of life are concerned, only the fittest can survive. But as a country currently ranked sixth in the world for child mortality, Nigeria has nothing to cheer by way of child survival. Nigerians know too well that hunger and poverty are birds of the same feather. But Nigerians are confused about which comes first.

They wonder if they have to be alive in order to survive, or whether they must survive in order to be alive. Even the children have been compelled to ask what their lot is. According to the State of the World’s Children 2008, although the annual number of deaths among children under age five is on the decline, Nigeria is yet to record a stable or improved rate of child mortality over the last decade – meaning the country is not on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals 5 target for child survival, which calls for reducing by two-thirds the 1990 child mortality rate by 2015.

While child mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa have generally decreased by 14 per cent since 1990, Nigeria remains one of the countries in the continent with the highest child mortality rates. Currently, Nigeria actually has one of the highest rates of child mortality in the world. Indeed while child mortality has improved in recent times in neighbouring West African countries such as Republic of Benin and Ghana, little by way of improvement has been observed here in Nigeria.

Already, estimates from United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) indicate that the country’s infant and under-five mortality rates remain no better than 110 and 183 per 1,000 live births respectively. Death from preventive childhood diseases is still commonplace with Nigerian children aged five and below dying from malnutrition, measles, pneumonia, malaria, acute respiratory infections, polio, diarrhoea and vaccine preventable diseases amongst others.

However, in line with efforts aimed at reducing infant and child mortality in the country, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) recently gave the foremost children’s hospital in West African sub region. Massey Street Children’s Hospital (MSCH) a facelift in the area of infrastructural upgrades and donations of equipment amongst others.

Commissioning the projects at the official hand over of the several projects, Jide Idris, Commissioner for Health, Lagos State posited that the projects and donation of medical equipment in the hospital would improve its capacity to provide life saving services to children in Lagos and beyond particularly now that the state is working towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Idris who lamented over challenges faced in achieving MDG 4 and 5 which seeks to address maternal and child mortality in Nigeria disclosed that challenge of resources viz-a-viz financial, human capacity and social resources has led to the death of infants in Nigeria.

According to the commissioner “lack of space and infrastructure has affected the hospital’s ability to provide the needed paediatric care to people who besiege the hospital for treatment hence moves by GT bank to upgrade facilities in the hospital and provide necessary medical equipment would improve medical care been extended to patients at the hospital. The Lagos state government also welcomes the participation of corporate organisations in providing infrastructures and equipment aimed at improving healthcare in the state.”

Lending her view, Yewande Savage, Chairman Governing Board of MSCH, noted that since the hospital relies on the Lagos state government for everything, well meaning Nigerians, corporate organisations should emulate GT bank gestures towards improving healthcare which seeks to reduce infant and child deaths in Lagos state and Nigeria at large.

For her part, Khafilat Araoye, General Manager/Head Settlements Group, GT bank disclosed since the hospital has remained the birth place of thousands of Lagos citizens since establishment in 1962, there is the need to improve the quality of healthcare services to children who seek medicare at the hospital.

Going down memory lane when the bank undertook its first corporate social responsibility project in 1996, Araoye noted that the bank’s partnership with the hospital has seen the paediatric facility and accommodation upgraded which in turn saw the rapid turnover of cases and an enormous outpatient department.

The GM who was optimistic that the projects have given the hospital face-lift to serve teeming population of Lagos added that the bank remains committed towards the continuous development of the hospital.

Equipments donated to MSCH include nine glaucometers and accessories, five units of oxygen gauges and 12 oxygen concentrates, nine pulse oximeters, three jaundice meters and one suction machine unit, new dental chair, 250KVA soundproof generator and the renovation (tilting, painting, plumbing, and electrical works) of seven wards,  the reception area, emergency section, out – patient wing and nurses’ station.