Infants and maternal mortality: USAID donates teaching aids to FCT School of Nursing/ College of Health Technology Kuje

FAVOUR ISHEMBER, Abuja

In a bid to reduce drastically under Five, infants and  maternal mortality index in Nigeria, and particularly FCT, USAID has donated teaching aids worth millions of naira to FCT School of Nursing, school of midwifery, Gwagwalada and Ila College of Health Technology, Kuje.

The gesture  is part of USAID support to the Nigerian government to mitigate infant and maternal mortality rate, given the fact that Nigeria comes second in the world in the mortality of infants and mothers .

In his welcome address, the State Coordinator, health Force Work Management Activities, Dr. Victor Ochagu said the support is to help the schools to provide quality training for midwife’s, nurses and community health extensions workers in the nation’s capital city.

In the words of Dr. Ochagu “In FCT, this is the first time we are conducting this kind of event, because in Nigeria and FCT in particular, we have a lot of challenges of human Resources for health, we have challenges in training, so we had initially conducted a base line assessment to ascertain what and what the schools will need in terms of equipment so that they can provide that quality training for the students,  and base on that assessment report, we came up with the items that the school will need and we are here today to deliver it to them”

“As we know, the issues around maternal mortality health is actually related to the availability of qualified health care workers, as a training institution, as we support them to provide quality training, and produce quality health care workers, they can go out there to solve the issue of material mortality in Nigeria, for us, this is part of what the USAID government are doing to support the Nigerian government to reduce the indices of under five and material mortality”

This plays a very big role at the steps to reduce the material  mortality rate, because when the students get quality training, they reflect it on their job performance” he said.

On the duration of support, the State Coordinator said” We have a five years award to support the FCT in this project, so we will continue giving the support in the next three to four years.

The equipment donated  are worth millions of naira, in term of laptops, to ensure the tutors provide current model of teaching to the students , we have projectors, as most of the class rooms are very large, it’s required they have  an audio viewers system so that the students can actually benefits from quality training, we have job aids , Manny games, we have models where the students can practicalities on how to deliver services”

In his response, the Director of Nursing Services, Health and Human service Secretariat, Babatunde Steven said the recipients will put the gift to maximum use to fight the issue of brain drain confronting the medical institutions in The Territory as  as tutors are jetting out of the country to look for greener pastures abroad.” but when we have teaching materials like this, it will encourage teachers to stay and make judiciously use of them to boost their teaching capacity”

Earlier, the Director, College health and Technology, Hon. Yahaya  Musa Muhammad  said “What we are witnessing   here today will go a long way to improve the teaching value of our tutors  in our  respective schools, most of the beneficiaries of these equipment are referred to as Doctors in our rural communities because they are the first point of call for the treatment of most ailments, whether they are experts in it or not,  hence the equipment will be utilize effectively in ensuring that the short falls we had in terms of these equipment’s in our respective schools will be a thing of the past, we will also like to use this medium to ask for continuity of this gesture.

“As we are very much aware,  the kind of challenge we have in the health sector in our communities , we also want the students to understand that in partnership with the USAID , we were given these equipment, hence , we are going to deliver quality teachings to the students and that is the reason why our students working abroad are performing excellently. When I traveled out for medical treatment, the Doctor that attended to me was a Nigerian, the Pharmacist that served me drugs was a Nigerian which signified that Nigerians can perform virtually   excellently at any given time in any role assigned to them , particularly in the medical field, and with what we are given here today, I promise  that we are going to produce more excellent students that can Serve any where in the world”.

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