Dr Bature Gwani, Chairman, House Committee on Health and Human Services of Gombe State on Sunday called on the Federal Government to extend the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to rural areas.
Gwani told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Abuja that such extension would help to curb cases of maternal mortality.
According to him, most challenges of maternal mortality spring from villages due to poor health facilities, lack of access to hospitals and funds.
He said the NHIS would take care of the poverty issue and allow women to access healthcare without barriers.
“ We need to extend National Health Insurance Scheme to the grassroots so that no woman can be denied medical attention regardless of where she is.
“This will go a long way to help the nation improve on the mother and child health care.
“Another setback to curbing maternal mortality is ignorance; so we need to bring sex education to our children where they can start early to learn about maternal healthcare.
“By inculcating maternal mortality health into school curriculum right from the primary and secondary level by the time they grow up they will have that in mind and utilize it maximally.’’
Gwani urged policy makers to come up with policies that would domesticate the extension of the NHIS to villages so as to curb the challenges of maternal mortality.
He urged the government to fight poverty by empowering villagers with skills that would help them earn a living to help them deal with such cases of lack of funds.
Dr Kole Shettima, Director, Africa Office, MacArthur Foundation urged the federal government to expedite the passage of the National Health Act to address the lack of access by rural dwellers to health care.
“For any health sector to operate well, there needs to be efficient funding.
“To curb maternal mortality is at the core of our values at the MacArthur Foundation, and that is why we provide grants to fight it.
“Many of us worked towards the National Health Act; the act is supposed to provide us with a number of resources that will help us to provide services in the rural areas
“I hope that the government will be able to operationalise the health act so that the resources will be available for that purpose in time’’, he said.
Shettema said there was need to educate people at the grassroots to take matters of health seriously.
He urged stakeholders in the health sector and well meaning Nigerians to contribute to grassroots healthcare so as to cater for mothers and their babies to curb maternal mortality.
Mrs Saudatu Sani, the Executive Director, Advocacy Nigeria, an NGO, said the rate of maternal mortality was high in the north hence the foundation focused on Adamawa, Gombe and Zamfara as pilot projects.
Sani said the foundation got grants from the MacArthur Foundation to achieve its goal of curbing maternal mortality.
She said the objective was to improve maternal healthcare thereby reducing the excessively high maternal and infant mortality rates through community mobilization projects in the three states. (NAN)