From: BillyGraham Abel, Yola

Medical practitioners in Adamawa State began a 21 day training designed to build the capacity of medical practitioners in the state towards optimising conditions and resources in curbing infant and maternal mortality in the Adamawa State.

The training tagged ‘Saving One Million Lives’ will engage health workers in a three weeks training in a modified life savings skills.

The training which began, on Wednesday, at the School of Nursing and Midwifery Yola, was declared opened by the Adamawa State commissioner for health, Dr. Fatima Atiku Abubakar, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary, Adamawa State Ministry of Health, Dr. Ahmed Garba.

Declaring the event opened, the Adamawa State commissioner of health, Dr. Fatima Atiku Abubakar represented by the permanent Secretary ministry of health, Dr. Ahmed Garba Said, “Central to human development is the issues of health. Nigeria has poor health indicators, the north East has  the least health indicators in Nigeria, so the training is timely and crucial to boosting health services in the state.

Dr. Garba said,” I commend the Adamawa State governor and house of Assembly for declaring a State of emergency on health. Which means the health sector is getting the deserved attention.

He said,”A program like this is a welcomed development. Participants in the training have been selected based on merit so as to ensure effectiveness  in the system.

I challenge the participants to reciprocate government’s positive gesture by showing leadership and bringing the expected improvement in the healthcare services in the state.”

Dr. Ahmed Garba said, “over time Training and retraining has taken a secondary position but we have discovered that training  is Central to effective medical practice so the State government is positioned to put training ahead in ensuring quality healthcare delivery.

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“This training has to do with equipping practitioners with skills in reducing maternal and infant deaths. We have been loosing people at the most productive time of their lives and it is something that no one is happy with.

“The north east suffers the indignity of having the highest maternal and infant mortality in Nigeria, our aim is to train and retrain health workers until the negative index in brought down.

Garba said, “The training will address the issue of attitude towards best health practice like attending antenatal care, and then improvement in technical capacity of the trainees to optimize facilities for safe delivery.”

“We will train them on some basic components in healthcare delivery, so we will address the issue of attitudinal changes, the nutrition component and service delivery.”

“The quality healthcare delivery, the midwife in case of assisted births so that in instances where all the facilities are not available, they will be able to optimise conditions for safe delivery.

The state representative of World Health Organization, Pharmacist Iyabose Igbinovia said, WHO is glad to associate itself with the training initiated by the Adamawa government towards combating infant and maternal mortality. Iyabose said, “Adamawa state is lucky to be one of the Frontline states in the ‘Save a million lives training. We look forward to improvement in the health indices of the state.”

The host of the training, Provost School of Nursing and Midwifery, Abubakar Sadiq said, “the purpose of the program is to train and retrain participants in attitude and skills, so that they can bring additional value to the health care.

He commended Dr. Fatima Atiku’s initiatives in revamping the health sector in the state.

Abubakar said, “the leadership of Dr. Fatima has brought so much progress such that the school is able to carry out renovation of hostels and other facilities within the school just from revenue generated from training hosted by the school.”