The Maternal-Newborn Child Health Coalition (MNCH) in Gombe state has attributed the increasing maternal-child mortality in the State to the over bearing negative influence of highly placed politicians, civil servants, traditional and religious leaders who manipulate postings of health workers from rural to urban areas.
Recent finding have indicated that there are rising cases of maternal-child mortalities in the State especially in the rural areas and the MNCH Coalition is advising that rather than interfering in the posting of health workers, they should use their esteemed positions to address this issue.
The findings also shows that with a population of just over three million people, with a density of 7.1 doctors and 20.3 nurses and midwives per 100,000 people, the State ranks 21st and 26th nationally in terms of health worker concentration under each category.
Almost all of these health workers are employed within the public health sector but distribution still favours urban areas and tertiary hospitals. Of the 1,432 doctors, nurses, midwives and nurse-midwives employed in Gombe State, 929 are within Gombe metropolis with a high percentage working at the Federal Teaching Hospital in Gombe city.
However, addressing a press conference, Chairman of the Coalition, Comrade Alhassan Yahaya, regretted that the attitude of these influential persons is among the reasons why the state is experiencing the negative health indices contained in the most recent Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) where Gombe State has 162/1000 under-five mortality rate.
The Coalition, according to Comrade Yahaya, views this situation as alarming and unacceptable and says it will not fold its arms and watch the future of the State being destroyed. It will therefore immediately embark on an advocacy visit to most of these influential figures, beginning with the Chief of Staff in the Gombe Government House, Head of the State Civil Service, traditional rulers among others over the matter.
“We urge our distinguished political, religious and traditional leaders as well as civil servants to desist from manipulating postings and use their positions as key policy makers and influencers to call on the influential people in and outside Government to stop interfering with the postings of health workers”, Comrade Alhassan stressed.
It is therefore calling on the State Government to enforce the clause for the compulsory acceptance of posting to any part of the State as contained in the employment letters of workers for at least two years before seeking redeployment.
It also charged the State Ministry of Health, the State Primary Health Care Development Agency and the State Civil Service Commission to be proactive in ensuring that retiring health workers are quickly replaced to bridge the gap in the service delivery.
While calling for the construction of more hospital quarters for increasing health workers to ensure retention at the places of work, the Coalition pledged its commitment to work with constituted authorities at all levels and with other stakeholders to improve quality of maternal-newborn child health services in the state.
