Kelvin Bowoto
Some health-care stakeholders have urged a full review of Nigerian universities’ reproductive health curricula, including prevention and treatment.
They made the call on Monday in Abuja during a two-day session on reviewing reproductive health curricula.
The stakeholders were concerned that the existing curriculum primarily focuses on treatment, which they blamed for the country’s high maternal mortality rate.
Friday Okonofua, a renowned professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Benin, stated that medical students should be trained in preventing diseases that lead to maternal death.
Okonofua, who directs UNIBEN’s African Centre of Excellence in Reproductive Health, stated that the meeting was called to address reproductive health challenges, including the signals of reproduction governing population, the process of development, and childbirth.
He praised NUC for recently releasing the revised Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS) for universities but lamented that sexual reproductive health rights (SRHR) problems had been virtually completely ignored.
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“So, we want themes such as rights, social justice, gender, and equity to be addressed in our curriculum so that our pupils receive holistic education.
“Today, Nigeria is notorious for having one of the world’s highest rates of maternal deaths—women who die after childbirth.
“So, we are concerned that the majority of the components that currently focus on our reproductive health revolve around treating conditions that lead to mortality rather than preventing them.
“We believe that before a woman comes to the hospital, she would have experienced suffering. And it is critical that our training program, both undergraduate and postgraduate, is organized in such a way that students are aware of how to prevent these challenges from recurring,” Okonofua remarked.
In his presentation, Dr. Ibrahim Abbas revealed that every six minutes, a Nigerian woman dies needlessly as a result of an unsafe, illegal abortion.
He stated that while Nigeria continues to lead the sub-region in implementing global and regional measures to address the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) disease burden, the country still has some of the poorest reproductive health (RH) indices in Africa.
Techrectory with Agency Report.
