No fewer than 40 Community Health Workers (CHEWs) across the 16 Local Government Areas of Kwara State has been engaged in integrated maternal and newborn child health care.

THe CHEWs were engaged by the Kwara State Saving One million Lives Program for Results (SOMLPfR) in a bid to reduce the maternal mortality rate in the state to the barest minimum.

Speaking with journalists during the five-day training programme, the State SOML programme manager, Dr Omar Ibrahim, said that the training was a capacity building for healthcare workers in primary healthcare centres.

Dr Ibrahim said the four years old Federal Government’s programme, which started in 2017 in the state, was extended due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and rounded off this month.

“As we do not want an increase in maternal mortality, and to achieve this, we needed to have health workers who know the best practices. Aside from telling them the best thing to do, there is also a practical session.

“This is not the first training we would be doing. We have done several capacity building training since the inception of the programme in 2017. We had trained about 400 health workers across the state making it 440 with the ongoing training at Omu Aran in Irepodun local government area of Kwara state.

Dr Ibrahim also said that the kind of training that the health workers received could be passed down to other healthcare workers in their various local governments.

Dr Ibrahim said, aside from training, there is medical equipment put in the facilities to work with, adding that the programme covers all the states plus FCT.

He advised the participants to put the knowledge gained into use as soon as they get to their various facilities.

“It’s a big job. We are encouraging state government to take it up for sustainability because for the Federal Government to have taken it up, it shows that it’s a big job. So, considering the scarce resources, I believe the state will do something about it”, he said.

Earlier, the Director for the Course, Professor Adeboye Mohammed, expressed optimism that there should be more informed hands at the grassroots levels to take correct decisions, take care of the newborn and be able to refer appropriately at the end of the training.

Adeboye, who is a professor of Paediatrics at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), said the training was essential for CHEWS to enable them to manage newborn babies confidently before referral.

He explained that newborn health management needed competent hands from skilled health personnel for them to live a normal life without any scars that may affect newborn babies.

Kwara trains community health workers on integrated maternal, newborn child health