Nno, Welcome, Ola,

I visited Nigeria in 2006 and was bitten by a bug called High Infant Mortality Rate. I read about the issue in a local news paper in Abuja. This information was buttressed while on holidays in my father's village (Nnewi); an elderly woman informed my cousin and I of 2 infant deaths that Christmas week from childhood preventable illnesses. I was aghast. I sat down, dumfounded, then a flashback of I (as a child), at the end of civil war, women carrying their dying babies of kwashiorkor to my father's compound seeking relief; food, water, medicine anything to help their infants. In 2007 I returned to finish my graduate school in Public Health and my community health class provided a platform to research infant mortality rate. Hence, I wrote a paper on it, and proposed a three year strategic pyramid solution.

This blog is about being part of the solution:
(a) bringing the issue to bear
(b) envisioning seamless integrated strategies
(c) visualizing adapting innovative, sustainable solutions to mitigate variables that give rise to high infant deaths.

At issue is the continent of Africa. Some may say I gave money to Africa, yes you did but in reality you gave money for a project in Mali, or Sierra Leone or Liberia. That is 3 countries out of 50. From my research, high infant morality rate in SSA is attracting international, national and individual researchers seeking effective methods in implementing sustainable measures or solutions towards reversing the numbers. I am suggesting that more man power is needed to combat the problem at least in Nigeria.

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG_FS_4_EN.pdf



Thursday, October 21, 2010

SSA and UNMDG (United Nation Millennium Development Goals) 2015

Friends would read my blog then call to ask why blog about such a serious topic?  Blogging is a conversation with the world (said my sister).  Furthermore, the issue I am blogging about is neither new nor novel.  One needs to read Robyn Dixon's article in Los Angles Times (http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fg-africa-millennium-goals-20100920,0,393254.story), "Africa lags in development goals" to grasp the gist of why I blog.  Robyn's article is a good one, albeit brief, broad, and rife with complexity of the continent.  She did mention child mortality. The piece is about Africa, specifically SSA and UNMDGs.  The article presented some variables and barriers endemic and emblematic to SSA, thus positioning the region not to reach UNMDGs by 2015.  Even Nigeria has acknowledged it would not achieve MDGs.  In 12/8/06 the Nigerian Federal Commission (FEC) approved N60 billion for the MDGs health scheme, designed to reduce infant and mother mortality rates by two-thirds by 2015. By 2007 the money has not yet been distributed due to ethnic and or tribe infighting.  I think it is a foregone conclusion that the MDGs would not be met.  So I would continue to blog because I  I care, because I have a vision, because I believe that one day the global village with its man power and resources would wake up and begin the reversal of infant deaths in SSA just as the AIDS/HIV numbers in the U.S. have been thumbed down.  I blog because I want to bring attention to the high rate of infant mortality death in SSA, and for the global village to acknowledge the facts, to find it unacceptable and act upon the facts.
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