Community and religious leaders have been charged to mobilise the people and create awareness on effective reproductive system to reduce maternal deaths in Nigeria.

A team leader of the Nigeria Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, Gate-Way Behaviours Project, Mr. Olumide Adefioye, made the call at an interactive programme in Ilorin.

He said the Gate-Way Project was aimed at ensuring checks and balances in health of women and children during and after pregnancy.

He said: "The pregnancy period is tagged Gate-Way Project aimed at checking whether the completion of antenatal care and engaging in interpersonal communication on family health matters would actually lead to positive health behaviours, promote family health and reduce burden of healthcare system. With the implementation of the survey exercise, it was discovered that 40% of pregnant women did not know when to start antenatal care while some are not willing to go for antenatal due to no common illness at early stage," he said.

He added that the organisation had beefed up capacity of health service providers, renovated health centres, provided equipment and embarked on common base advocacy to reach out to people on the importance of antenatal care.

"We then evaluate the outcome of our exercise, to see if it really worked and we found out that the Gate-Way Project had drastically reduced maternal mortality in Ilorin South Local Government Area. Significant achievement was recorded from the programme as the project was effective and successful as more than 60% of pregnant women in Ilorin South are now registered for antenatal care in their first trimester," he said.

Adefioye further noted that when pregnant women attend antenatal care, they are not only exposed to issues about pregnancy but also exposed to other positive health information on exclusive breast feeding, adoption of family planning as well as completion of immunisation for her child.