UNFPA Provides Nigerian Hospitals with Equipment and Supplies to Save Mothers' Lives
KATSINA STATE, Nigeria —Maryama Aliyu is bleeding internally and slipping into shock from pregnancy-related injuries. Just three months ago, a woman in her condition here at Katsina General Hospital in northern Nigeria would have had a poor chance of survival.
Today, however, Dr. Nsimma looks calm, even confident. He and his colleague, Dr. Natalya Adamu, are fitting Maryama’s legs and waist into a thick blue neoprene outfit. Known as a non-pneumatic anti-shock garment, or ASG, this relatively simple but effective device was recently donated to Katsina General’s maternity ward by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. And it may very well save Maryama’s life. The ASG prevents blood from concentrating in the lower half of the body and forces it upward, so it can nourish the heart, brain, lungs and other vital organs.
“Within the short few months of this intervention, we have seen dramatic results,” says Dr. Nsimma, sitting down in his office at the hospital now that Maryama has stabilized. “In the past, we would lose these women.”
Nigeria, like much of sub-Saharan Africa, is a dangerous place to become a mother. The risk of dying in childbirth is a hundred times higher than what it is in most high-income countries. Each year, around 37,000 Nigerian women die bringing children into the world. That is more than 100 deaths a day from preventable causes.
These numbers reflect a lack of adequate obstetric care for women, a problem that the Nigerian Ministry of Health and UNFPA are working together to resolve. UNFPA has donated beds, medicines, surgical equipment and contraceptives to maternal hospitals and clinics throughout northern Nigeria. Thanks in part to advocacy work by UNFPA, maternal health services have been entirely free in Katsina State since 2004. This removes one of the greatest barriers to women obtaining proper obstetric care here in Nigeria, one of the 20 least-developed countries in the world.
The work to help pregnant women does not stop at these preventive measures. One of the primary goals of the partnership is to enhance the ability of medical personnel to save the lives of women who are already experiencing an emergency situation, such as an obstetric haemorrhage. To do so, UNFPA supports the Emergency Life-Saving Skills Initiative (ELSSI). This course trains doctors and nurses working in the maternity units of hospitals and health centres in the proper handling of various obstetric emergencies.
“We’ve seen that patients used to stay in the hospital for two to three weeks,” says Baba Samaila, UNFPA Adviser in Katsina. “Now, they are home in two to three days.” For all their success, doctors and nurses do have one complaint about the new emergency materials: there are not yet enough to go around.
“It’s not enough,” says Dr. Jamo when asked about the quantity of anti-shock garments his hospital has on hand. “Some patients have to queue to wait for the next one. Sometimes we even have to take the ASG off one woman to put it on another.”
As the government and UNFPA bring these new interventions up to scale, these shortages should decrease. Yet the fact that new medical options have been so quickly integrated into treatment plans here is clear demonstration of how badly they were, and are, needed.
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