Abuja – Wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, has reiterated her commitment to work toward reducing preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths in the country.
She gave the assurance at the 3rd annual family planning consultative stakeholders meeting organised by UNFPA on Thursday in Abuja with the theme “Evidence-based family planning programming 2016 and beyond.’’
Represented by the wife of the Senate President, Mrs Toyin Saraki, Buhari said some of the measures toward achieving the goal was through advocacy and strengthening of accountability mechanism.
According to her, the efforts will be scaled-up through the deployment of health enhanced civil data and birth registration, among others.
The president’s wife, however, expressed displeasure over the rating of the country as the second highest in the world in maternal and child mortality rate.
She then stressed the need for concerted efforts to scale-up family planning supports to improve the situation.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
Buhari recalled that “in June 2012, stakeholders and countries including Nigeria made commitments to provide 120 million additional women with modern contraceptives by 2020.
“Attaining this ambiguous goal will require concerted efforts on the part of stakeholders.
“In order to hold ourselves and the global community accountable toward achieving this goal, there is the need for robust monitoring of global performance and progress.
“I will support the government to contribuite to accelerated reduction in ending preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths by adding my voice through advocacy and strengthening of accountability mechanism, among others.’’ (NAN)