ABUJA – The Federal Government says it has put in place an integrated Management of Childhood Illness as the main thrust of its child survival strategy to reduce under-five mortality rate in Nigeria.
The Supervising Minister of Health, Dr Khaliru Alhassan, said this on Tuesday in Abuja at a news conference to mark the 2014 World Pneumonia and Prematurity Days.
According to him, Nigeria’s intervention programmes will be scaled up by the new strategy given the improvements made in reducing under-five mortality rate between 2010 and 2013.
“The National Demographic and Health Survey 2013 have shown some improvement in total under-five mortality rates from 157/1000 live births in 2008 to 128/1000 live births in 2013.
“Similarly, the WHO (World Health Organisation) 2014 report also showed some marginal improvement in pneumonia causes of under-five deaths from 17 per cent in 2010 to 16 per cent in 2012.
“A lot stills need to be done to further reduce these rather high rates of deaths due to pneumonia.
“Government of Nigeria through the Federal Ministry of Health has adopted the integrated Management of Childhood Illness as the main thrust of its child survival strategy.’’
The minister said the new strategy was on a pilot scheme in selected states before it would be launched in other parts of the country.
He said that Government was mindful of the dangers posed by deaths caused by pneumonia and related diseases in under-five children by resolving to adopt the new strategy.
Alhassan said the new strategy would be implemented alongside other measures already being implemented to help prevent other causes of deaths among children under five years of age.
“The guidelines on this have been printed and disseminated; training manuals developed and capacity of community resource persons are being built to deliver this initiative in some states (two pilot states of Abia and Niger within the WHO RACE project and two states of Kebbi and Adamawa with support from UNICEF).
“I will like to reaffirm that the Federal Ministry of Health remains committed to scaling up high impact interventions that address all issues of maternal, newborn and child health including strengthening of human resource.’’
The minister thanked all government’s development partners for being steadfast as Nigeria works towards achieving the health-related goals of the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) by 2015.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Nov. 12 and 17 have been set aside by the WHO as World Pneumonia and World Prematurity Days respectively.
NAN reports that pneumonia is rated second to malaria as the cause of under-five deaths in Nigeria. (NAN)
