By Cosmas Omegoh

The health of pregnant mothers and their children will receive greater boost in the days ahead.

Indications to this development emerged lately when an international NGO, Vitamin Angels, and Christian Health Association of Nigeria (CHAN) sealed a partnership deal. 

The partnership ensures that going forward, Vitamin Angels will increase its supply of essential vitamins and deworming drugs in grants to hundreds of CHAN’s Mission Institutes (MIs) scattered across the country.

Vitamin Angels, our correspondent   gathered, “is a charity providing lifesaving vitamins to mothers and children at risk of malnutrition.”

The organisation “focuses on serving pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, and children under five who are at risk of malnutrition, and do not have access to national health services. They also provide deworming tablets for children, and promote nutritional counselling for mothers in need.”

CHAN on its part is a holding body for hundreds of mission hospitals and clinics   owned by the Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Baptist Church, ECWA, and many Christian missions. 

It was historic when CHAN and Vitamin Angels met in Ibadan, Oyo State, recently to undertake a comprehensive assessment of how well the partnership in the health care delivery intervention in the critical primary health care segment of the nation’s healthcare system had fared. Both then went to agree on how essential vitamins and other drugs would be given and distributed. 

Participants at the event were unanimous that making available multiple micronutrients essential drugs supplements to pregnant women at their early stage of pregnancy will not only ensure that the women enjoy robust health, but produce healthy children whose contributions in future to national development is comparable to wealth in gold. The understanding, they affirmed, is akin to a marriage made in heaven.

Present at the interactive one-day meeting were health workers drawn from CHAN’s Member Institutions (MIs) in Oyo State, representatives of CHAN headquarters in Jos, Plateau State, and top officials of Vitamin Angels.

CHAN’s Director, Advocacy and Communication, Mr. David Omoarebokhae, in his goodwill message on the occasion, entitled “Programme Coordination, meeting on Maternal Child Nutrition and Quality Antenatal Care Services,” explained how the partnership between CHAN and Vitamin Angels all began.

“Vitamin Angels,” he recalled, “came to CHAN for partnership, and they were welcome with open arms.

“However, the basis of the partnership did not include grant. Vitamin Angels did not come with funds, but offered much more than money. They came with Vitamins which were considered vital, and of excellent quality.”

Till date, he noted that about 48 mission hospitals affiliated to CHAN across the country had benefitted from the Multiple Micronutrients Supplements for distribution to women as well as drugs for deworming children.

“In 2021 alone, over 1.27 people mainly women and children benefitted from the drugs made available by Vitamin Angels.

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“In 2020, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, a good number of the target benefitted.”

Mr. Omoarebokhae stated unequivocally that the partnership was working and implored Vitamin Angels to make available more of what he described as the “Vital, reliable and essential drugs.”

CHAN, he said, has the capacity for a wider reach to the remotest part of the country through its Member Institutions.

The Country Director of Vitamin Angels, Dr. Francis Ohanyido, on his part, assured that Vitamin Angels is committed to acquitting itself in the catalytic role it has set out to play in the Nigeria’s primary health sector.

His organisation, he noted “is determined to assist in opening the eyes of the nation to doing the right thing in the health sector.”

Dr. Ohanyido is renowned Public Health physician and president of the Academy of Public of the Academy of Public Health, whose contributions to Public Health recently earned him an award at the Zenith Global Health Awards in Lusaka, Zambia.

He said research has shown that health drives nation’s development, urging that health should be considered as everything. Nutrition, he added, is at the heart of health. He emphasised that Nigeria’s biggest resource is her human component.

“Our young population is our hope. We should be intentional in how to integrate good nutrition into taking care of our women and children.”

According to Dr. Ohanyido, “the many needs of a pregnant woman revolve around what she takes. In other words, what a pregnant woman eats affects the development of the child especially in the first three months of the foetus which is regarded as very sensitive. Increase production of red blood cells to prevent aneamia, is not only from the food taken, but the vitamins.”

Vitamin Angels, he said, had been spending so much money on bringing in drugs to fight and prevent malnutrition. The modality of how the drugs get to the target, however, rest on CHAN with it’s over 800 primary healthcare partners.

He appealed to government to support the purchase of these essential drugs for onward distribution to a wider spectrum of the people.

On the effects of worms on children, Dr. Ohanyido canvassed regular deworming. 

“Worms,” he said, “are products of the environment, but it is important that everything necessary is done to ensure that children and worms do not compete for the available food.”

Participants at the event testified to the efficacy of the drugs, and asked that the supplies be made more regular, and the quantities supplied increased.