The Lagos State Government has fed about 5,000 indigent pregnant women registered in public healthcare centres across the 20 local government areas and 57 local council development areas of the state.
According to a statement made available to newsmen by the state government on Wednesday, this has been the case since the launch of the Mother Infant Child Health Development on September 22, 2021.
The Commissioner for Health, Prof Akin Abayomi, disclosed this in his address during Phase IV of the Mother Infant and Child Development programme organised by the Office of Civic Engagement for another set of 570 indigent pregnant women in the state, held at the Adeyemi-Bero Auditorium, Alausa, Ikeja.
According to Abayomi, the MICHD was designed as a preventive rather than a curative security measure geared towards making Lagos safer by the year 2050.
Earlier, the Special Adviser on Civic Engagement, Princess Adebowale, described the MICHD-2050 programme as an initiative that looks at security from conception, to birth, to adolescence and into adulthood.
“Aside from the plan to provide food packs, containing daily nutritious food and supplements for 570 pregnant women and nursing mothers, this fourth edition also showcases 228 nursing mothers who had earlier benefitted from the postnatal programme, that will now get a maternity box containing baby clothes and baby care articles,” she said.
On her part, General Manager, Lagos State Health Management Agency, Dr. Elizabeth Zamba, said her agency had been on the MICHD journey with the Office of Civic Engagement for three years since it was first conceptualised.
“It is a programme that we are fully aligned with because we are all about improving the quality of life of Lagos residents, especially Mothers and Children. Even the ILERA-EKO plan, the way it is designed, favors mothers and children and offers them the best health care.”
She said the agency will be enrolling 570 mothers on the ILERA-EKO plan for the next year, while those previously on it will be renewed, so that they can continue to have qualitative health care.
“This is a passion of Mr. Governor and also the Commissioner for Health as we journey towards universal quality healthcare,” Zamba reaffirmed.
The Chief Executive Officer, Gero Care, a consulting firm working with the MICHD programme, Dr. Ajibola Meraiyebu, said, “With this remarkable journey, we have seen all the changes and help that this project has brought to all the women.
