Why Maternal and Perinatal Death Surveillce and Response Bill Must be Supported -Sen. Umar

Senator Sadiq Suleiman Umar, representing Kwara North Senatorial District has said that the Bill on Maternal and Perinatal Surveillance and Response is very relevant and should be supported.

Sen. Umar, who seconded the bill on the floor of the Senate during the plenary, Thursday, urged his colleagues to support the Bill as maternal and Perinatal death is so serious in Nigeria.
According to him, the whole world has been able to drop it to 216 per 100, 000 life birth. In Nigeria we still have maternal death up to 512 per 100,000 births.

“To be able to deal with this, we need to approach it scientifically and logically by having a verifiable data that can be used for effective planning, effective use of resources to analyze the data to guide on what programming and policies that will help in curbing the maternal and Perinatal death.

“For this, we think that there is a need for a bill that is specifically target to achieving the use of data to make evidence based recommendations for action to decrease maternal and perinatal mortality.

“The passage and proper funding of this bill will ensure a framework that will guide data collection, analysis and where the data should be domicile to give access to all healthcare workers, policy makers and international development partners involved in the health sector of the country”, he stated.

Sponsored by Senator Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe (Kwara Central), the bill among other things is seeking to notify and collect accurate data on all maternal and perinatal death as well as disseminate findings and recommendations to decision makers, policy makers, civil society and health personnel, to increase awareness about the magnitude, social effects and presentability of maternal and perinatal mortality.

The bill after scaling second reading was referred to Committee on Health for further legislative inputs