Day dRPC-KECCoH trained Kano village, ward heads on child and maternal care

Following a sensitization workshop for district heads of various local government areas of Kano state held in Katsina state, the Kano Emirate Council Committee on health (KECCoH) in collaboration with the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC) recently organized a step down training for village and ward heads across a select number of Kano’s LGAs.

The sensitization workshop on maternal and child healthcare was part of efforts by KECCoH and dRPC to reduce child and maternal mortality in Kano state by improving maternal and childcare delivery services in the state. The idea for the training workshop was for the district heads to share the knowledge they had acquired at the Katsina workshop with their corresponding village and ward heads.

Among others, the step down training which was attended by district, village and ward heads, as well as imams, health educators and teachers in the respective LGAs, focused on community mobilization for Antenatal Care (ANC), Routine Immunisation (RI), environmental sanitation, as well as improved access to quality food and nutrition for pregnant women, nursing mothers and their infant children.

While speaking at the sensitization workshop in Tofa LGA, Sanusi Abubakar, the representative of the district head of Tofa said training workshop would help improve health awareness in the LGA and urged the respective village and ward heads to go back to their respective communities and disseminate the knowledge they acquired among members of their communities.

“This training has brought us health awareness and our expectation is that with the information they now know about maternal and child healthcare, they would go back to their respective communities and disseminate same to their subjects; by educating our people in the villages about ANC and RI as well as convincing pregnant women to give birth in healthcare facilities, against doing so at home,” said Abubakar.

In a written speech read at the event, the Emir of Kano, HRH Mallam Muhammad Sanusi II urged the entire Tofa community to give their utmost contribution and full support to ensuring the availability of quality healthcare services for women and children and quality education for children so they would grow up to become healthy and productive citizens.

“Educating the girl child is very important; a mother is the first teacher to her child, therefore educating one girl child is better than educating 10 male children. This is because if she is educated, a whole generation will be educated through her,” said Mohammed Sani Adamu, social mobilization officer at Tofa LGA.

Ubale Rano, representative of KECCoH and dRPC at the event admonished the district, village and ward heads to ensure only qualified healthcare personnel were sent to their various healthcare facilities adding that, if a patient dies due to negligence of healthcare personnel, they were to be prosecuted in accordance with the 2014 National Health Act.

He also urged them to always ensure all children were registered at birth and keep such records to enable the village and ward heads keep track of the children for routine immunization.

During a similar step down workshop event at Shanono, the district head, Alhaji Ibrahim Gaya urged the village and ward heads to always keep their environment clean so as to avoid the proliferation of mosquitos leading to malaria.

One of the village heads in attendance at the event, Kabiru Isyaku complained of lack of healthcare workers in the Shanono facility saying there was only one midwife in the hospital which meant women were going through prolonged labor as there were no midwives to attend to the pregnant women in labor at night.

He, therefore, made a plea to Emir Sanusi to help the community get more health workers posted to their facility.