UNICEF has raised alarm that lack of medical facilities, religious and cultural inhibitions and bad terrain was thwarting its efforts to completely eradicate childhood diseases and to check mother and child mortality rate among rural communities in Niger State.
The UNICEF declaration is coming barely weeks after Civil Society organisations in Niger State called on Governor Abubarkar Sani Bello administration to expedite action in constituting Primary Health Care Development Agency (PHCDA) Board to meet the health needs of Niger residents, particularly women and children in rural areas.
Many communities in the state, the UNICEF Programmes Manager, Dr. Mohammed Khalid, said, still believed that diseases such as cleft lips, zika, jaundiced mother to child and other forms of deformity could not be resolved medically.
Instead, he said, they erroneously believe that ‘‘witchcraft or spiritual forces,’’ caused their problems.
“About 3, 000 communities across all the wards in 17 local government areas also hardly have access to basic health and social facilities and where such facilities are available they are not utilized by the people who have held tenaciously to their belief,” Khalid said.
Khalid disclosed this at the one day meeting with Health Journalists in Minna.
He categorized the challenges as, “Hard to Reach” because donor agencies are not only confronted with trying to change the people’s belief to embrace modern medicine but the availability of health facilities and as well the difficulty in reaching targets.
“Women in the affected areas hardly accept relevant vaccines either because their husbands wouldn’t allow them to go for ante-natal or give them money or allow them, the consequences become giving birth to deformed children and they will brand such deformed babies to be witchcraft and therefore would want to get rid of them. Changing all these have not yielded desired results,” Khalid said.
