From: Taiwo Oluwadare, Ibadan

Stakeholders in the health sector, on Wednesday, raised concerns over increased maternal deaths occasioned by the lack of vaccines and awareness for tetanus treatment especially in rural communities.

The stakeholders raised these concerns in Ibadan during the second round of Maternal Neonatal Tetanus Elimination (MNTE) campaign, in Oyo State, by the Oyo State Primary Health Care Board.

Speaking at the sensitisation meeting, the state’s coordinator of National Health Care Development Agency, Mr. Steve Akinrinade said the World Health Organisation (WHO) was supposed to have certified Nigeria a tetanus-free country due to efforts in the past, but that some remote communities were frustrating the efforts by Health CSOs to achieve total eradication of the disease.

According to him, the country was excluded from the 29 countries certified to be tetanus-free noting that it was against this backdrop that the stakeholders gathered to chat way forward on how to eliminate the disease, in Oyo State.

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Part of the strategies, according to him, was to immunise pregnant women and women of reproductive age with TT vaccines, noting that the major setback to elimination of tetanus was late release of fund from counterpart partners.

In the first round of campaign, where wards from seven local government areas were selected, Akinrnade said the agency was able to record 90 per cent success of coverage, saying that the agency aims to cover 100 per cent of the communities in the second round of the campaign.

Corroborating him, the agency’s health officer, Mrs. Lolade Olawoyin, said the second stakeholders’ meeting was to give outcome of the first round MNTE in the state.

She added that it is also to discuss lesson learned from the first round campaign with stakeholders and improve on identified weakness and challenges.